the brute-booted sleep nazis are back…

and at it again with a vengeance.

They are vermicious little twerps with cloying voices and wall eyes that hungrily follow me to both sides of the room at once…as I split into two halves in a desperate attempt to get the fuck away from their ever-prying inquiries.

Upon their own reluctant, embittered awakening to the day, they immediately demand to know precisely what time I went to sleep — and upon hearing my answer, their mouths curl into a terrifying leer, their eyes narrow greedily, and their lips move as if in unholy prayer…while their fingers shuffle and shift under the covers like spidery, nacreous-tipped abaci, and they slowly count out just exactly how many hours of sleep I got.

It is never enough.

For even if I somehow achieve their strongly suggested 17 hours at a stretch (usually possible only with absinthe, cat-gut sutures, and the blunt side of a pick-axe applied directly to the temporal lobe), they then begin to whine about “quality sleep”, and barometric pressure, and sensory deprivation tanks, and delivering oneself totally and completely — as a martyr to the cross — into the clutching claws of Morpheus…which is ironic, since they themselves rarely dream.

I dream, though…of a world where the fucking Sandman wears no nimbus…and night closes tight like a lid, and the stars splinter and shatter and rain down their icy cosmic guano forever onto the heads of those who would subdue me.

About muffybolding

Muffy Bolding is a mother/writer/actor/knitter/feminist/withered debutante who likes the smell of asparagus pee, and remains obsessed with the bathroom hygiene of her three children -- despite the fact that they are 23, 19, and 16. She is blissfully married to a cute Jewish boy who looks like Willie Wonka, but remains tragically in love with the dead poet, Ted Hughes. She has the mouth of a Teamster, and her patron saint is Rocco (pestilence relief.) Ms. Bolding lives in Southern California, where she enjoys typing words, making movies, and plucking the rings from the fingers of the dead. She was the co-creator and Editor-in-Chief of the award winning satire zine, Fresno Lampoon, and in between writing screenplays, carnival barking, and savagely threatening her trio of darling larvae with a wooden spoon, she currently publishes the zine, "Withered Debutante." More of her work can also be found in the anthology, "Mamaphonic: Balancing Motherhood and Other Creative Acts", the compilation zine, "Mamaphiles III: Coming Home", as well as in The Cortland Review and hipmama.com. She is currently writing and producing for film and television, and working on a book of essays entitled, "Inside A Chinese Dragon." She has slept around, but not nearly as much as she would have liked.

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