Condensed Hours of Sleep

One may rest his weary head upon his trusty pillow,

Yet one needs to awaken early and tell the world 'hello'.

For if one has an early flight that he needs to catch,

He must win against sleep in the nightly match.

I have four hours of sleep. Tonight is not the only night that I have had condensed sleeping hours, yet tonight is the night where I actually need to wake up early the day after, which means that I need to abide by my condensed sleeping hours, so that I ensure myself not being the reason as to why my family misses its fight back to Melbourne.

This comes as unsatisfying news to me, as I am not only using my condensed hours of sleep to write this, but I also have to use some to continue reading the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - it is quite an addictive book, if I must say so, and it requires constant attention, which ultimately requires a lot of time, and time is something I am very short of tonight if I want to catch the plane tomorrow. What pains me is that in order to sleep, I need to write and post this, then to think about life and the souls I have met, and then read. It is only then that I can fall into a peaceful slumber.

And another problem arises - once I fall, I fall into a deep sleep. I am a deep sleeper, in fact so deep, that a marching band on full volume cannot shake me from my rest. My body wakes up when it feels discomfort in the position it is in, or when my bowls decide to, well, move. None of these will happen in four hours, because my bowls have no reason to move as of yet, and this bed I am sleeping on at the moment is uncomfortable all over, thus I think it is impossible for me to get to sleep in the first place.

I am scared if I fall asleep that my father will have to wake me. I should not worry about this in terms of its success in waking me up, because my father's voice has the, insofar, unproven ability to wake up the petrified Chinese warriors. My worries lie not in the fear of my dad failing to wake me, because that will never be the case because of how strong his inside voice is, but they lie in the fact that when or if I sleep, I will have to be woken by him. I will have to go through freezing and immediately thawing nerves, risking permanent damage in my reflex system.

Now, I have so many things to worry about that I probably will not get any sleep. I have promised myself a large, juicy can of RedBull energy drink tomorrow and a nap on the plane back, if I do not sleep. However, because tonight I am sharing a room with my mother, who is terrified of the movie Mama that we just saw - her second viewing of it, I probably will not enjoy her snoring, which has already started to tear at my very soul. It is no wonder that my father had so happily traded his bed for sleeping on the sofa. He is now able to comfortably sleep and sore to a James Bond movie, while I am cooped up with Snore-a-saurus Rose.

In the midst of this dilemma, my sister is asleep, sound asleep, in an atmosphere of peace, cool air and serenity in the comfortable double-bed I was sharing with her the last five nights here. I am the shortest in my family, and my feet are hanging off the tiny single bed I am laying on now. I feel as though I am the intrusive Goldilocks sleeping in the three bears' lair. I toss and turn in my sleep, and this bed likes to notify every family member in this resort about that.

Do not take your bed for granted the way I have. The best holiday is one where you can take your bed with you. And earmuffs. Big, fluffy, noise-reducing earmuffs.