May 8, 2015 3 min read

Summer is coming, and I couldn’t be happier. There’s only one downside. Summer affects my sleeping habits.

All winter I slept in a cocoon of warmth, enveloped by a thick comforter. I am potatoes inside the pierogi. Now, it’s warmer, and I sleep with one leg under and one leg on top. I am dull, kindergarten scissors trying to cut a thick sheet of construction paper.

All winter, I never wanted to leave the cocoon. They don’t call it a comforter for nothing. It was warm and safe inside.

As a kid, no matter how bad the nightmare was, I always felt safe under the sheets. As if a crazed killer clown or bug-eyed alien would be fooled by a thin sheet of cotton.

“Where’d he go? He was here a minute ago. There is no boy … just a strange lump under that pile of bed linens. Let’s look in the kitchen.”

The scariest dreams I had as a kid were the ones where someone was chasing me. I remember dreaming about a disembodied hand that flew after me. Think “The Addams Family” mail-carrying Thing, only with the flight powers of Superman. No, it wasn’t a hand with a cape. That would be stupid. Just a hand that flies.

But I digress, like I do. It’s warmer and I leap out of bed. I don’t linger quite as much. It is a little harder to sleep, especially in spring when the temperature fluctuates so much. The night has many more movements to it. I’m up to open the window. I’m up again to close the window. I put the ceiling fan on. I adjust the setting from cyclone to helicopter to Moroccan bar. Is it me, or do all ceiling fans have such drastic settings?

At four in the morning, I turn the fan off altogether. Usually, I am just reaching up haphazardly, in a fugue state, hoping to find the cord to turn it off, but I have to get completely up and out of bed to turn it off, because the chain is farther away than I realize. Every. Single. Time.

Even though I’m awake more in the middle of the night in the summer, I still seem to have more energy. The heat enlivens me. I am like a bear hibernating after a long winter. More accurately, I am a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. If I were a superhero, I’d be Butterfly Boy.

OK, Butterfly Boy wouldn’t be a first-round draft pick on the Avengers, Justice League or whatever. I might consider Kodiak Man or Grizzly Dude. My powers only work when the temperature is above 65 degrees.

My point, and I do have one, is that I slogged around all winter just doing my “Have to’s.” You know, the stuff you “have to do” like go to work, pay bills, etc. Now, the weather is better and I want to do everything, but it’s cool, because it’s warm out. I am alive again!

I’m out to soak up the sun, because, like it or not, these warm days and nights don’t last forever.

Next week: Butterfly Boy battles the Flying Hand and the Ceiling Fan of Death.