On your mark, get set, fall asleep!

I don't know about you, but when it comes to napping (and sleeping in general), I am a complete spaz. It seems that taking a nap should be so normal, so easy to do. I mean, you're tired, you got time on your hands, it makes sense to lay down and take a snooze. It's cozy, comfortable, it's very refreshing! I get it! But me and naps just don't get along. Actually, let me rephrase that, me and planned naps, do not get along. There is something about telling yourself that you are supposed to fall asleep and the pressure it creates that complete ruins the whole experience for me. It is impossible for me to make myself sleep during a specific window of opportunity. Like when you have an hour or so before mutual that night and could squeeze in some Z's or like after you have a baby and some saintly soul comes to your house to watch the baby so you can nap. What an opportunity! But it never worked out that way for me. I would try to sleep, but knowing that I was now expected to sleep and the entire point was for me to sleep, was simply too much pressure and I was consequently, wide awake. (Although just laying down and resting was still a huge treat.) However, put me in a situation where I doze off completely by accident and we got a winner! That is my favorite napping scenario. I can't come home from church and get into bed and make myself sleep. Can't be done. But put me on the couch watching a science fiction movie or Word Girl on PBS or let me read a book for a while and I am usually a gonner. Which is good to know, because sleep in and of itself is such a mystery to me. How come we can be sooo tired when we need to be awake (like when I was in Econ 101 at BYU or when I am reading Little Fox goes to the End of the World to Cindy in her bed at 8pm) and then completely wide awake when it is time to go to bed? Plus, when I am finally in my own bed and waiting to fall asleep, I start thinking about how exactly we fall asleep and also start wondering how we never notice we are falling asleep. Then I worry that I won't ever fall asleep that night because I am simply waiting to observe it happening. (I told you I was a spaz.) Add to this the extremely good possibility that I will have the strangest dreams imaginable and it is really a miracle I ever sleep, ever. So pretty much I have stopped announcing that I am going to take a nap. I now just make my way to the couch and turn on some Star Trek. "Captain, re-route all available energy to the sleeping systems!" Works every time....