Know when the best time to sleep is?

Everyone ought to know the answer to such a simple question, n'est ce pas?

But of course.

The best time in the world for napping is the hour following the rude awakening that jolts the eyelids apart, and pierces the eardrums at the same time, when the old alarm clock shrills its warning with such unspeakable stridency following a night of peaceful slumber.

How anyone can remain abed after such a harrowing experience is inexplicable.

But it is so.

You simply turn off the blatant blathering of the clock, snuggle back under the covers with one pillow under and another over the head, and resume that dream that was so rudely interrupted.

That is one of the more blissful hours of any lifetime.

Pity the miserable insomniac who can't for the life of him enjoy even one happy hour of peaceful rest during an entire night.

The sleepless one strides from room to room, drinks a glass of water, turns on the TV to watch an oldie he's seen before, sees shadowy ghosts about the room, is too hot or too cold, and spends hours on end in this miserable state, with eyes at half-staff.

He arouses with the sun, splashes through a cold shower, shaves, dresses and goes off to work, gulping a cup of scalding coffee, and makes life perfectly miserable for himself and his co-workers.

You can bet your sweet bippie that a sleep-walker would sleep through the next night and day, if he could.

The second and third best times for sleep (this is all from a personal standpoint, you understand) come in the form of a 20 minute snooze after a light lunch, and for the hour before supper, shoeless and with belt unloosed, spread out on the living-room sofa in the best Dagwood-napping tradition.

There are many other times when sleep beckons seductively, like during an especially dull seminar oration, and other instances too numerous to list here.

We sleep away a good one-third of our lives, most of us, so that anyone who has attained 30 must have spent a full decade in the arms of Morpheus.

During the eight hour work day at The Advocate you may be assured that your staff neither slumbers nor sleeps away its one-third of the day, but toils diligently to stay alert and abreast of innovate ways to improve our service for you and our community.

Don't forget to set that alarm for one hour earlier than you intend to get up and at em.

A snooze-alarm radio seems to be just what the doctor ordered, for the distaff side of this household.

Happy snoozing.