When someone sleeps well, you say that they slept like a baby. Because everyone knows that babies look like little dead angels when they are sleeping. Which can be frightening, but generally is considered cute. They are content and curled up and are good at sleeping, I guess that’s the point.

But what do you say when someone doesn’t sleep well?

I slept like an orangutan. ?

Or

I slept like a cabbage. ?

I don’t know what you say. I guess we need to figure out what exactly is the opposite of a baby. Not an old person, surely, because everyone who’s visiting a nursing home can tell you how babies and old people have way too much in common (something we have to brace ourselves for once we admit we’re mortal and all that, not that I’m mortal, I’m just saying, it’s true for everyone else, you know, who doesn’t have plans to live forever…) So…. what is the opposite of sleeping like a baby?

“Boy, rough morning. Last night I slept like a crack fiend.”
Perhaps, but I don’t like uttering words “like a crack fiend” before I’ve had my coffee. Those are late night words, after you’ve had a couple drinks in a dive bar somewhere under the bridge span in downtown Los Angeles. Otherwise, I don’t use those words.

Hmm… the opposite of a baby… babies are small and loud, but they are also soft. So, what is tall, quiet, and not so soft….?

An elephant?

“Oh, honey. Last night I slept like an elephant.”

Or…

“The Eiffel Tower.” It is tall, quiet, and not so soft.

“Whew, rough morning. I slept like the Statue of Liberty.”
“…The Washington Monument”
“I slept like the San Mateo Bridge at rush hour.”

And all this is true, of me, last night.
But there was one reward for being up all night (and by all night, I don’t mean all night, just that I woke up at 4am and never quite got back to sleep). I had given up and sitting on the couch, paging through a coffee table book at 6am when I heard a strange birdy sound coming from outside.
Wait? That sound reminds me a little of the sound… Is that the …?
I opened the front door and stood in the doorway in my pajamas.

YES!! It was! The wood thrush!! The first wood thrush of the season! This is a date which always gets marked down on the calendar. The wood thrushes disappear in late August to fly down to Central America, and then by some miracle, come back to these woods where they hang out for three months, high up in the trees. We rarely get to see them. But they are my favorite thing of summer, I kid you not. The bird song of the thrushes is….it’s just… well, it’s just that amazing. Really.

So… last night I slept like a monster truck at a tractor pull, but then got to hear the arrival of the woodthrush. Aw… gooshy, gooshy, gooshy….

(I was unable to upload the wma file of my own audio recording… but here is one on youtube from a woods that doesn’t look too different from ours, or how ours will look once we have leaves on the trees again…  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3IXZMB9JJM 

p.s.  Some time ago I promised to post an inspiring quote each Friday.  And then I didn’t.  Last Friday I had a number of hits, and there was no post.  Sorry.  Friday wasn’t the best choice for me to pick because I tend to be busy on Fridays.  But I’ll try again this week, and if it remains difficult–and why should it be so difficult, honestly?–I’ll switch to a different predictable day of the week.