Insomnia is a nasty little booger

I remember when I was younger, I would wake up in the middle of the night and see my dad sitting in his recliner watching TV. It could be 2 am, 4 am, whatever. It didn't matter. He routinely got up in the middle of the night to do something, whether it be watch TV, read a book or cut his toenails.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - You may not ever know who I'm talking about when I address my parentage. My parents divorced when I was 5 and both quickly remarried. Therefore, I call all of them my mom and my dad. So I could be referencing step-parents or biological parents. It never mattered to me. At this stage in my life I love them all and consider them all my parents. If it matters to the story, I'll point out the difference.

So, anyways, my old man got up in the middle of the night a lot. I used to wonder what the hell his damage was. He could be sleeping!

My dad, if he were much younger, had hair and weren't eating Cheetos and drinking beer while doing his TV watching.

If he wasn't asleep, you ask, how were you awake to observe him? Sigh...

It's amazing we're not biologically related. See, here I'm bringing it into the story. This is my stepfather of which I'm speaking. I, too, suffer from this Godawful problem. I get up in the middle of the night and do crazy things like write blog entries about what my dad does while he's awake in the middle of the night and clip my toenails.

Doctors tell me it's because I'm getting older. Pssshhh... I say back to them. Seriously. I do. Was I old when I was 8 and still couldn't sleep? I ask them that, and they stand around like idiots saying things like "well" and "um."

Pills fix this problem. Unfortunately, I have the tolerance of an ox. So while one Ambien might impair a regular person enough to keep him from driving a car, it takes four or five Ambien to get me to sleep through the night. No doctor in her right mind (mine included) would prescribe this much sleep medication to someone. Lawsuit waiting to happen.

This is what I imagine my insomnia looks like. He pops up to say hello anywhere from midnight to 4 am.

Of course, I've been in pain my whole life, too, because of the genetic disease I have. That doesn't help at night, when you're lying on a bed and your joints start shifting out of place from your muscles relaxing and not holding them in (our connective tissue is loose and doesn't hold our joints in like normal people's does). So sometimes getting up and moving is the only release from the pain that I have.

The point of the story is, someone please develop a pill for those of us who have to take five Ambien to sleep!