What's a girl to do?

It's 10:37PM on a Sunday night and I should be going to bed so I can pretend that I'll get a good night's sleep--an elusive event in my life. I sometimes imagine that, if I stay up until I'm deliriously sleepy, I might fall asleep and stay in that mode for the duration of the night. The only thing delirious about that thought is the thought itself. I can't remember when I've slept through the night. I'm like a newborn that needs sustenance or my diaper changed in the middle of the night, except I don't have a Mommy or Daddy to come take care of those needs.

I've thought about taking major medication to keep me asleep, but then I'd have the dream about swimming in a pool or other body of water and I'd wake up wishing I'd been wearing a Depends... I'm not very good when I wake up in the wee (no pun intended) hours of the morning to make a trip to the bathroom. I stagger a lot and occasionally crash into the doorway, career off the vanity and grab the window sill hoping to stay upright (and dry). I used to be a solid, sleep-through-the-night kind of girl, but old age and a bladder that thinks it's Silly Putty have changed all of that. I wake up in the morning looking as if I'd just gone 10 rounds with Cassius Clay (Muhammed Ali to anyone under the age of 55) and with the knowledge that those under eye creams with all their glorious promises about making my eye wrinkles invisible are some Madison Avenue guy's version of a knock-knock joke--"Knock, knock." "Who's there?" The response is silence as in "no one is there" because the eye creams work no magic and the only thing that is invisible is the money I spent securing that empty promise. At least I can elicit pity from passers-by. If I just had a cup with a sign on it, I might make back some of that money I spent on Eye Creams R Us.

Well, now it's 10:50 and I'm beginning to feel dozy, so I'm off to bed with hopes of sweet dreams...ones that don't include swimming pools, lakes, rivers or any other large collectives of water or vacant promises about what will happen to my eyes while I sleep. I already know what will happen. The wrinkles will cozy down just a tad bit more in the skin underneath my eyes and tomorrow I'll be ready for Round 2 with the Killa from Manila.