random thoughts – Day 1,678 – (Monday) – snooze alarm

My two current favorite things as an adult are sleeping and eating. Luckily, there is almost always enough to eat at The BungaLowell, but sleep is a moving target. My simple bed is my favorite spot in the house. 

My “ideal” bedtime as a working person was determined years ago to be around 10:00. Eight hours of sleep were pretty certain, with the morning alarm set for 6:00 a.m. There was a stretch of years this schedule worked perfectly.

My favorite spot in the house.

Then, things began to shift. When the alarm went off, I would hit “snooze” two or three times before I got up. After many months of this, I wised up and changed the alarm to 6:15, and bounced out of bed. For a while, all was good. The alarm went off, I got out of bed, the day began. 

For the past couple months, we are back to the old snooze alarm game. The alarm goes off at 6:15. Snooze is hit once, maybe twice, sometimes even three times before finally dragging myself out of bed. It’s harder now that it’s dark in the mornings. 

Adding to the excitement, for many years, October and April were sleep problem seasons. I would wake up at all hours of the night and if I happened to be asleep, there were often nightmares. The sleep thing would last for about four to six weeks and then it would sort itself out.

In more recent years, the situation has shifted. There are far fewer nightmares and I don’t wake up 100 times a night. It’s mostly because I can’t get to sleep. It’s easier to not wake up if you aren’t actually sleeping. It now sometimes takes several hours to fall asleep, and then I wake up hourly. All night long. One would think the exertion of tossing and turning would be tiring, and maybe it is, but tired isn’t necessarily the same thing as sleepy. Lately, the best sleep happens around 5:30 a.m., right before it’s time to wake up. Thank goodness for the restorative effects of morning coffee. And weekends when I can sleep late in my favorite place in the house.