Why do the arms of Morpheus elude?

Okay, I've never been a great sleeper - well, maybe when I was a baby.  I can't remember, and oddly that's the one topic my mother doesn't yammer on about incessantly.  (Just don't ask her about when I started to read.  My former husband and great friend once said that if she told the story one more time she would have me coming out of the womb with a newspaper in my hands.)

As a teenager my friends refused to spend the night at my house - I got up too early.  I was fine at their house.  I'd get up and talk to their parents: why are other parents so much cooler/smarter/better cookers than our own?  A query to be addressed at a later date.  Ad nauseum, as usual.

When I had children I slept because my body said to.  Middle of the night feedings for 20+ years, or so it seemed, tended to send out those warning signals that the ol' temple had to be replenished, so I complied.  And who doesn't remember the dulcet tones of a screaming baby waking us from our slumber?  Those days I could have slept years.  Or at least months.

The last fifteen years or so have not been kind, sleep-wise.  I cannot do it.  I seem to merely nod off for a couple of hours and then, cue the band, I'm awake.  And not just up - I'm ready to dig ditches, top trees, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Do I?  Of course not - it's dark outside.

My problem?  My mind doesn't realize it can stop working for a couple of hours.  I think too much.  About everything.  The Middle East.  The USA.  My children.  Why Bud couldn't wait for Deanie to get well in the mental hospital in Splendor in the Grass. 

And sometimes really random things.

People who go to bed and sleep for seven or eight hours have my admiration and envy.  I want to be you.  I want to turn it off for awhile and just rest.  My skin would look better and I could focus.  On what's important and what's not.

So as I sit here blogging (please help me come up with another name for this - I really hate "blogging") I wonder:  Can you really survive on as little sleep as I do?  Am I really walking around in a fog, recognizing little that is actually going on and seeing everything through a sleep-deprived haze?

I think I am.  And I think Morpheus does hate me.