Honestly I could probably sleep through a hurricane.

CAST OF REGULAR CHARACTERS CONTAINED IN THIS POST

Deciding that I should probably attempt to grow up and to join the real world I went and got myself a real life boyfriend (Rowbi). I’ve been single on and off for a couple of years and while most people would wake up gazing into the eyes of their lovers I would wake up to this:

First thing in the morning the cat wants breakfast and I to continue to sleep. So every night we have this same discussion.

Me: zzzzzz

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Me: shhhh

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Me: Die!!!!

Cat: MEOW MEOW MEOW

Then she jumps on my bed and sleeps near me. Sleeping with the cat is like being strapped to a torture apparatus of some description and every time you move ever so slightly you get an electric shock. Every time I move ever so slightly, the cat thinks that I’m about to get up and starting meowing at me. My friend called her the "trip-wire kitty".

She’s also gone deaf and bit senile so she sometimes forgets that my Mum has given her breakfast and comes into my room to wake me up just for shits and giggles. Also telling her to shut-up literally falls on deaf ears. Her strategy for keeping me from sleeping reached new heights this year when she realised that if she monopolised access to my pillow I would be more likely to get up. Additionally she is super comfortable and within inches of my ears so the meows are particularly intrusive.

I’m actually pretty good at sleeping despite the meowing though and honestly once I’m fully asleep I could probably sleep through a hurricane. I also can hardly concentrate until I had a decent dose of caffeine. Someone could break into the house and murder Rowbi and I will be of no use to him until I wake up and get a cup of coffee. Then and only then will it occur to me that his lifeless body should probably be causing me concern.

You see I have learnt to sleep with noisy things.

In year 9, at my high school, you spend a year at a rural campus living in houses of between 9 and 12 squealing 14 year-olds. We all slept within about 20 metres of each other so there was a lot of night time chatting and sing-a-longs and such. If for some reason you did need to get an early night, you learnt to sleep while people were giggling, dancing to the Fresh Hits of ’02 and discussing the best process for hanging up posters of Josh Harnett. If you were sick, you slept with noise or died.... or went to the sick bay which meant spending time with the dimmest nurse in the history of mankind which was equivalently painful as dying. In the morning, we had to be ready by 8:30am so my best friend and I always got up at about 8:27. (At this point feel free to be impressed that I can make the bed of a top bunk and get dressed in 3 minutes). Because we got up as late as possible, this meant that we had to be able to sleep through the chirping of early rising housemates getting their worms.

Also I’ve had boyfriends from about the age of 16 and have had to share beds with people most Friday and Saturday nights for the past 5 years on account of my hobby of getting drunk so the presence of a second or third person in my bed does not faze me, even if that person is a stranger.

Earlish in the morning, my mother also like to make phone calls and discuss unimportant things with my father like baby-sitting my brother’s children the following Tuesday. Her inside voice is still pretty loud and she thinks that I’m a bit lazy so her sympathy for waking me up is miniscule.

Also I live on a busy street and in a flimsy house made mostly of glass so I hear cars roaring and drunken bogans quarrelling all night. I also live across the road from a public swimming pool. This means that during the non-opening hours of the pool (ie the middle of the night) trucks are constantly pulling up and conducting some sort of activity that involves a great deal of pumping. During this process, the truck has to be kept running for some reason so it continues to huff and puff until you’re ready to blow your head in. This is usually finished off with a Greek plate smashing ceremony of some description. I’m not sure why plates have to be smashed as part of running a public swimming pool but that is most certainly what it sounds like. This whole thing is finished at the crack of dawn and just in time for the swim squad to start and the sound of the coach saying “Set and go” and then blowing a whistle. Then splashing. Set and go” and then blowing a whistle. Then splashing. And repeat 100 times.

Despite my ability to sleep through virtually anything I was unexpectedly woken up from my slumber the other day though. It was a Sunday there was some sort of carnival happening at the swimming pool and this man said over the loudspeaker at about 10 in the morning (I was still in bed with meowing cat) “We’d like to thank everyone for coming down... You’ve made it great”. He sounded like he was actually standing in my bedroom and I thought to myself “Oh did I have an orgy last night? Funny, that doesn’t sound like something that I would do but there is a strange man in my bedroom praising a large group of people for a huge team effort.” And then for a moment I thought that maybe it was someone was trying to auction my house even though we were in it and hadn’t really indicated that we wished to sell it.

I sat up and realised what was going on. I thought I would attempt to get a bit more sleep and as I turned to straighten out my pillow and doona and stuff before settling back in, I saw what Sneaky Snooze Faced McGee had achieved in the half a second I had been distracted:

So the sleep-in was off and I struggled to get out of bed and on with my day. It was OK though because Shelley’s OK.

Love,

Elle xx