Restless and Reading

Reading on the couch at 2:30am

Every once in a while I, like most people, have trouble sleeping. You know the feeling: you wake up hours too early with too much on your mind and no practical way of getting any of it accomplished until dawn. Watching the clock, you debate with yourself about whether to get up and do something or whether you should just lie there and force yourself to sleep. The latter plan almost never works for me. So I almost always get up and read in the living room.

This was the case about 2:30am a few nights ago. And as I curled myself up on the couch under a blanket with my latest mystery novel propped on my knees, I realized that this must have been a trait I inherited from my Grandma Mary Jean.

As a kid, I'd wake at odd hours to find her on the sofa, stretched out under a blanket, engrossed in the novel propped to reading level on her chest. Her glasses would have slipped down her nose a bit, her hair would be gently ruffled, and she would have kicked off the shoe-like slippers she always wore in the house. I discovered her reading like this often enough to assume that this was a regular habit with her. To this day, I don't know if she had occasional trouble sleeping or if she just couldn't quite put down those really good books. (Know the feeling?)

Like me, Grandma was rarely without a novel--she could buy them from their neighborhood clubhouse for 10 cents, after all--and had stacks of the things in the closet, one in her sewing bag, and others by her bed. Her favorites were romance novels and mysteries. Turns out those are now my favorites as well.

What do you do when you can't sleep at night?