Last week, Mavis Wanczyk became the winner of the second biggest prize in Powerball history. I don’t know who she is, but I’m ready to declare my undying love for her and pledge my total allegiance as her friend and possible receiver of designer gifts.
People always ask me what I would do with that much money. I’d like to think I would be kind and generous, paying off all of my family’s debts and buying everyone I know a Ferrari. But the truth is I’d probably be incredibly petty about the whole thing. I would probably buy a huge billboard in every town in America which read, “SUCK IT, PAULA G!” Paula was a elementary school friend who once beat me for the title of “Cutest Smile” in a third grade beauty pageant. I swore a blood vendetta against her, and I guess I still have feelings about it.
But seriously, there is only one single thing I’d want to get with that money. The first thing I would do is buy myself one good solid undisturbed drama-free freaking night of sleep. Sleep to me is more precious than gold. If you gave me a choice between living permanently in the body of Angelina Jolie or one good relaxing refreshing night of sleep, I’d probably grab my pillow and take the sleep.
I don’t think I’ve gotten a decent night’s sleep since 1987, when I slept from a Friday night through an early Sunday morning. My mother said it was astounding that so much laziness and sloth could be contained in a single human being. She wanted to send me to a lab for testing to see if I had some narcoleptic gene.
When I was a teenager I could sleep anywhere. I fell alseep in chairs, in the back of cars, on my school desk. Once I apparently fell asleep during a soccer match while I was playing on the field. All I remember is hearing a thud and someone scream “goal!” I think I went back to sleep after that.
Now I can’t get comfortable anywhere. I bought a $400 mattress topper to help me get comfortable and I still toss and turn like I’m sleeping on rocks. An angel could fly down from above and stitch me blankets made from the feathers of her wings and I would still never feel comfortable.
Do you remember when you were 6 and you used to scream and throw a temper tantrum when your parents made you go nap? Don’t you want to go back in time and tell your kid self, “Shut up and take the Zzzzs, kid. You’ll appreciate later.” If I could go back in time now all I would do is ask my mother if she wanted me to take a nap. I would be the best napper in history. I would win napping awards. I would likely win the Nobel Prize in napping, a prestigious award handed out to honorable nappers since 1972 (Editor’s note: This does not exist).
What happened? Where are the people yelling at me now to go take a rest? Why do people yell all kinds of stupid unimportant stuff at me all day yet no one tells me to go take a nap? “Rebecca, where’s your story, you’re way past deadline?” “Rebecca, where’s that $50 you borrowed from me last week for ‘medicine’ that you used to buy snickerdoodles and beer?” Or, “Hey lady, you can’t park there, that’s the ambulance zone, are you insane?” See, none of these concern me because they aren’t about naps.
But it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. Apparently my bed is cursed by a demon because I’ve never slept through one night in it. I legitimately do not understand what happens when two grown normal people get into a nicely made beautiful bed and wake up with it looking like it survived a sinking on the Titanic.
When my fiance and I get into bed, we start out perfectly normal, two heads on two pillows, sleeping quietly under a layer of nicely folded blankets.
Somewhere around 3 a.m. I wake up with every single blanket on the floor, four pillows on my head, a foot in my face, and the mattress halfway off the bed. What are we doing at night? Challenging MMA fighters to a death battle in my bed? Fighting an invasion of pod people?
We also make the mistake of letting our dog sleep in the bed. We’ve about 750 ways to keep her on the floor or at the foot of the bed, but our dog has determined that this is actually in fact her bed and we are just two warm cushions who need to be on either side of her to snuggle and pet her.
She starts out at the bottom of the bed, acting innocent and disinterested. By the time I shut my eyes and begin to taste the sweet joy of sleep, she begins to sneak up to the top of the bed. She’s about as stealthy as a T. rex driving a Buick through your living room window.
No matter how hot it is, the dog is always freezing cold. Every night, she burrows into the blankets and inches herself ever closer to my derriere. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night when it’s about a thousand degrees, thinking someone has set a small fire on my butt. But nope, it’s just a small ridiculous dog insisting that her body temperature constantly match that of the surface of the sun.
One day, even if I’m a foot in my grave, I will have a decent night of sleep, free from the wild exploits of my rebellious comforter cover and my aggressively hot dog. Until then, I can only play the Powerball in hopes that I can win enough money to buy a giant cloud in the sky and sleep peacefully for as long as I wish.
Rebecca Rose would like take a nap now. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 7-14, 2017.
