Staying Up Late is Overrated

Today, I got my Christmas wish: I "hibernated" for 10 hours.  Well, technically, I wanted to be on snooze mode for 12 hours, uninterrupted.  The 10 hours was interrupted after the first 6 hours, and it's 2 hours less than my desired hibernation time, but sleep is sleep, and for someone who's been having an average of only 4 hours of sleep time the past 6 weeks, this was already pretty awesome.

My tweet about this got a friend to reply: "Funny how kids hate going to bed/taking naps. But for adults, sleep is a luxury!"  I responded that my kids insist that they can stay up late because it's still vacation time, to which the same friend said, "Tell them staying up late is overrated!"  This made me realize that I'd heard that line when I was much younger.  But did I listen?  Of course not.  I bet you didn't either.  I now wish I did though, but how could I have known then, right?

There are many, many things that we were told as kids about what adulthood is like, but we tend to never believe any of them because we're too excited to grow up.  We look forward to birthdays, to the adding of another number to our years.  With each number added also is another set of privileges made available to us.  But when I hit 30 last year, I realized they're not really so much "privileges" as "realities".  Some good, some -- well -- you just have to live with.

It's almost midnight now, and my little boys are still awake.  I won't tell them yet to go to sleep but I will say to them that, once Jan. 1 comes around, they have to be in bed again by 9 PM as school reopens next week.  They'll learn about the luxury of sleep on their own in about 20 years or so, when they finally have a family of their own.  Then, when they turn to me with that exhausted look on their faces, I will pat them on the back and lovingly say to them, "It's a bitch, right?  Happy Holidays, boys."