Are you a late-night type of person? Do you wake up in the morning not knowing where you are--or maybe even who you are? Do you stumble around semi-conscious until about 2:30 in the afternoon? Does it seem like your energy just begins to rise around dinner time? Do you “hit your stride” at around 10:00 at night?
If that’s you--you may not relate to the following discussion of afternoon naps. Being a “morning person,” I rise early and am ready to take on the day the second my tootsies hit the ground. I want to rush through my to-do list as fast as possible because I know what’s going to happen by afternoon. At about 2:30 it starts to feel like a leak has sprung somewhere on my person and all the potent morning energy is draining out. The thoughts get fuzzy, and the fatigue becomes overwhelming. And if I’m driving, Lord help the other motorists.
What is needed, of course, is an afternoon nap. When the kids were little, the routine was pretty simple. I’d tell them I was going to rest for a few minutes and not to knock on the door unless something reeeeally important was happening that I needed to know about. Then I would go to my room, shut the door, and flop on the bed for 20 minutes of glorious rest. Things have changed. I now have a special napping chair. It’s a green tweed recliner, bought at a local garage sale for 30 bucks, six years ago. Its mechanism is a little clunky and I think it actually reclines farther than the manufacturer intended it to. (The chair did flip over backwards once, with me in it, pinning me upside down against a storage trunk—that was weird. The act of extricating myself from that position was surely something to behold.)
Anyway—back to the chair. It has to be pushed over near the green painted ex-toy chest that now serves as a catch-all for junk. The top makes a great side table for all the other paraphernalia napping now requires. The following items will be placed on the top of the chest: cell phone (duh), house phone, TV control (or “changer” as it is called in our house), radio controller (not like for a toy airplane or anything—it’s really for the radio that sits next to the bed), some paper and a writing utensil (‘cause you know all kinds of important ideas are going to come to mind the minute you sit down), a book or one of the zillions of magazines I subscribe to but can never seem to find the time to read, and in recent years a pair of reading glasses in case I actually want to see the words in one of the aforementioned magazines or (let’s be honest) even hold it right side up. I won’t use most of those things, but they’re there if I need them. Now we move on to last few items that don’t sit on the makeshift table but are desperately needed for a proper nap. (We’re almost done—hang in there.) They are: my favorite down pillow, a blanket if it’s winter, and the floor lamp. There—that’s about it, I think. Once all the various items have been assembled, it’s time to park my fanny in the chair, yank on the old wooden lever to lift the foot rest, and lean back to start the gentle descent to Nirvana.
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