everybody needs sleep

I recall quite distinctly the Sesame Street montage of "Everybody Sleeps." I thought the most wonderful way to sleep would be the little girl in the car seat (can you believe those were considered safe!?!?!) with the wind blowing through her hair. The second best way would be floating on an air mattress in a pool.

I've been reminded of the importance of sleep over the past couple days. I skimped on the sleep last Thursday, and I think that set me up for getting a coworker's cold/flu thing, because I'm feeling rather under the weather now. Bad time to get sick -- I have less than two weeks to get my PhD dissertation handed in to my thesis committee. AAAK! I have thus been working day and night at writing, rewriting, researching, making figures, etc. And sometimes that's meant I've forgotten I need to sleep.

But...thanks to my rabbit Joelle, I've remembered.
I have not often observed Joelle sleeping. In retrospect, this is probably due to the fact that rabbits are crepuscular and thus are most active in the mornings and evenings, which happen to be the times that I am at home and in the presence of Joelle. Over the past several weeks, however, I've been doing more work from home. When she's not chewing up my computer cords, Joelle usually rests in one of her favorite places. But even then, I had not really seen her sleeping in those places, although it's kind of hard to tell with all that hair. Either she's getting TIRED of me being home all the time or she's getting sick (let's hope not!) or she's exhausted because it's shedding season or maybe I've just been paying more attention -- but as the weeks have worn on, I've caught her sleeping more and more often!
Her favorite place these days is under the pink chair.
No, no - not on it -- UNDER it!
More rarely I've found her asleep in her "house" (cage).
Yesterday I thought I saw her sleeping but wasn't sure: she was twitching her ears and chewing now and then. It reminded me of the puppies I've had who would all but run while having a dream. She was indeed asleep, and Joelle was having a pretty intense dream!! I wonder, what do rabbits dream of...?

I'm thinking I'd better take a lesson from the wise bun and get some more rest myself. Sleeping is, after all, very necessary for keeping people and rabbits alike in healthy, cheerful, good working order. And I think it also contributes to cuteness, too.