I'm not a good sleeper -- never have been. While I'm very accomplished at going to sleep, I'm deficient at staying there for the full eight hours. By two o'clock in the morning, I'm awake -- reading, watching a previously-recorded basketball or baseball game, or, more often, lying there with the body dormant but the mind in a frenzy about our doomed civilization and about whether my newest skin thingy has already metastasized.
So I decided that it was time for divine intervention.
Surprisingly, there's no patron saint of sleep. The closest is St. Dymphna, but she's more properly, at least according to her website, the saint of "mental and nervous disorders." Insomnia a nervous disorder? I don't think so, but on the other hand, she works cheap. To light a seven-day votive candle at her shrine in Massillon, Ohio costs only $3.00 -- so what the heck. And it can be done online, via Paypal. it's a bargain; why not give it a try?
Then there's St. Vitus, the patron saint of oversleeping, also not exactly my problem. But St. Vitus is a busy fellow, inasmuch as he's also the patron saint of actors, comedians, dancers, and epileptics when he's not busy warding off lightning strikes and fending off attacks by wild animals. He's kind of the go-to saint for all manner of things, but as far as i can tell, simple insomnia is not in his portfolio.
Inasmch as I'm even-handed about religions, I think I'll try Hypnos. who is billed as a genuine sleep god. Hypnos is the father of Morpheus (the god of dreams), brother of Thanatos (yes, that Thanatos) and the son of Nyx (night) and Erebus (the deity of darkness). Quite the family tree. In order to placate the entire group. a three-buck candle would be clearly insufficient, even insulting. I figured better to go whole-hog and sacrifice a lamb. However, there are no lambs in my condo unit, and I was, frankly, afraid of making a mess, so I thought that perhaps a lamb chop would do just as well. I mean, how would Hypnos know. So I checked the freezer and would you know it not a lamb chop to be found. However, I did manage to locate a couple of pork chops which I think will serve just as well. Tonight, I will eat them in honor of Hypnos. By the way, I make a nice sauce out of orange juice, soy sauce, and garam masala. I'm hoping that honoring the diety will earn me a couple of good nights' sleeps.
And as a backup, I'll have 5 mg of ambien at hand.
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