SLEEPLESS IN EAST LONDON

It is the middle of the night (ok, 12:28, if you must know) and I can't sleep. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to sleep again without the aid of medication. Because tonight I had thought, I am exhausted and just want to go to sleep. And I had forgotten to take a sleeping tablet and did not think that I need to take one, as I was so tired. So of course I have been lying in bed since 11:30 and am unable to relax enough so that I can sleep.

How does one explain sleeplessness to a person who is asleep before his/her head reaches the pillow? I am constantly amazed at my husband's ability to fall asleep. He will fall asleep in front of the television. He will fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. He simply gets into bed and falls asleep. The moment his head hits the pillow - or even before - he is gone. Then he gets very annoyed, because I can't do the same.

I have always been a bad sleeper, in the sense that I don't sleep when other people sleep. A night person, one could say. Night time is the time when I could be creative, when I could think, when I wrote my PhD and did all my studies. And then I would catch up over weekends, or holidays.

Now, of course, those habits are catching up with me. I am too old to work all night and then during the day too! Currently I feel as if my head is spinning independently from my body. My cat is looking at me as if I am the one keeping her awake, when she can choose to go and sleep somewhere else, instead of in the study. I have made myself a cup of buchu rooibos tea. I hope this will help.

Reconstruction? Yes, the operation has been done and I have the permanent prosthesis and two perky f/boobs. My husband's colleague called me an "intombi" (young girl) recently. I have not been an intombi in a very long time. These days it's mama more often than not.

I am having the grey hairs coloured tomorrow, I mean, later today.

In the meantime I wonder if I should go and do the dishes. No, am too sleepy.