Nap or Snooze You Can't Lose

I just woke up from a nap.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I just woke up from lying nearly comatose on the couch for about an hour. Sam, bless his little heart, let me sleep. Now I’m stiff as a board and powerfully thirsty and need to take a whiz, but my little snooze sure felt good.

I used to try to take little cat naps at work on occasion, but some sorehead employee complained and my bosses thought poorly of the practice so I had to stop. But I get up and get going early in the morning and I don’t know about you, but a little nap around two or three p.m. just hits the spot. It rejuvenates me for the rest of the afternoon - which hopefully, will be short.

Naps have different names you know? There’s your cat nap, which is a quick, half-attentive nap like cats take where you’re pretty darned relaxed but still ready to pounce on something at a moment’s notice if you have to.

There’s your power nap, which is very similar to a cat nap, the difference being location more than anything I think. The catnap can occur just about anywhere, but the power nap occurs mostly at work. Also, the cat nap is primarily for relaxing whereas the power nap is to help you prepare to meet some upcoming challenge.

Naps have health benefits you know? Experts advise that you can achieve your best cat nap or power nap by making sure you’re comfortable. Take off your jacket or tie or shoes (or whatever - just be discreet) if you need to in order to relax. Stretch out on a sofa or recliner or even on a bed if there’s one available. Whatever happened to those nap tents some companies provided for their employees by the way? I thought those were pretty cool.

Once you settle in, close your eyes and think relaxing thoughts. Note here: relaxing thoughts are not the kind of thoughts where you do something vengeful to your boss like the ladies did in the movie 9 to 5. You should limit your cat nap or power nap to no more than 30 minutes - any longer than that and you might as well go home and call it a day.

I remember taking naps in kindergarten. The teacher had us lay our heads down on our desks and played soothing music or we brought blankets to school and crashed on the floor. I remember having graham crackers and milk or juice when we woke up.

There’s another nap called the Dutch nap. But depending on your nationality maybe you haven’t heard of it. I believe it’s pretty common, but I’ve lived among Dutch people so long, I just think everyone knows that the Dutch nap involves lying down with your significant other so you can take a relaxing snooze after some . . . uh . . . canoodling, if you get my drift. That’s all I can say about that because this blog is not supposed to contain adult content. If you don’t understand about Dutch naps, perhaps you will recall The Starland Vocal Band song Afternoon Delight, which topped the Billboard charts in 1976.

“Gonna find my baby, gonna hold her tight
gonna grab some afternoon delight.”

Anyway, a bag of poop on that saying, “If you snooze you lose.” When you take a nap you win.