I’m not a morning person.
It didn’t use to be this way. As a child I regularly bounded up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed hours before the rest of my family. There was something very delicious when you’re eight about having the house all to yourself in the quiet dawn of the morning for an hour or two.
Generally I’d use this time to eat several bowls of Cookie Crisp and play video games. PRIORITIES PEOPLE.
It wasn’t always fun and games. It also meant that I was the first child awake at every sleepover, garnering myself some quality time with the host’s mother over what was probably a very awkward cup of tea.
By the time I was a teenager, I settled into my current sleep habits. I am neither a morning person, nor a night person.
It takes me two hours to get with it in the morning. Not get ready; if need be I can shower, dress, and leave the house in 15 minutes, albeit with wet hair.
But it’s no use trying to talk to me, or expect me to talk to you, or expect me to do anything other than look in your direction and maybe grunt for one or two hours after I wake up. More if there is no coffee to be found. My brain just does not register any outside stimulus until about 8:00 am.
But, karma has delivered my comeuppance in the form of two small girls who are very much morning people.
For quite a few months one or both of them would regularly awaken around 6:00 in the morning, ready for some quality cheerios-and-television time.
And as spring waxes with earlier and earlier dawns, my children wake up earlier and earlier.
No problem, I thought. Blackout curtains! If it stays dark in their room longer, they’ll sleep longer. Up went the blackout curtains.
The next morning my kids were up at 5:30. The blackout curtains didn’t work. My kids are reverse-vampires.
On the plus side, they probably won’t be able to see their reflection in the mirror or cross a running stream. This will come in handy in 15 years, when I won’t have to fight any teenagers for the bathroom in the morning.
On the other hand, they’ll probably sparkle ala the vampires in Twilight, giving credence to their aforementioned stripper names.
I’m doomed.
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep. Show all posts
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Assuming It Makes Beer-Thirty Come Around Sooner, I Should Probably Go Along With This.
Conversation with Preschooler at 3:30 in the afternoon:
Her: Can I put on my pajamas?
Me: Sure, why not?
Preschooler puts on her pajamas.
Her: Is it dark yet?
Me: No, hon, putting on your pajamas won’t make nighttime come any sooner.
Her: Yes it will!
I don’t even know why I’m having this conversation.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Maybe The Sandman Is Hiding Out At A Baitshop. That Lazy Bastard.
When I was fairly young, my family used to go to the video rental store (which also doubled as a bait shop) on Friday nights to rent movies. Why yes, I’m old AND from from the sticks.
In addition to the movie, I got to rent a video game for our Atari, and later on, Nintendo game system. No, not Super Nintendo. No, not Nintendo 64 (Hmmm...I just seem to be aging myself further, here.) Nintendo. And Atari.
One of my fondest memories (besides the strange olfactory combination of electronics and fish), is waking up at 6:00 Saturday and Sunday mornings, and having the video game all to myself for a couple hours. Even then, the quiet of the house in the morning before the other inhabitants awoke, was blissful.
That’s right. I used to be a morning person. A REAL morning person. At every sleepover party, I was the kid up at six am, talking to some one’s poor haggard mother while all the other girls slept until ten in the morning. I had trouble waiting until an appropriate hour to run over to Best Friend’s house to play every day. I saw the sun rise on a regular basis, for no reason at all.
Fast forward ten years, and things started to change. Every sixteen year old can sleep in, at least until 9:00, without too much effort.
And by the time I got to college, I was a normal human being. I had to set the alarm to be up before 8:00 am. And I could nap - anywhere and everywhere. The rules of napping in public don’t seem to apply to college students, at least not in my college town.
All of this just to say, Toddler doesn’t sleep any more. She used to sleep through the night, maybe waking up for a bottle if she wasn’t feeling so good, or if she failed to eat her bedtime snack.
But since she started getting her molars, she’s been up several times a night, usually insisting on a sippy cup of milk before going back down. And by insisting, I mean screaming. No, making that SCREAMING.
Worst part is, though this has been going on for a month or two, there’s no end in sight. Homegirl is the slowest teether ever. Seriously, she’s eighteen months, and only has nine teeth.
We’ve tried replacing milk in the sippy with water, and good old “cry-it-out.” All this results in nothing but night after night of screaming so loud it wakes up the entire household.
So, faithful readers, any suggestions? Because the Sandman has gon' fishin' and doesn’t seem to be returning any time soon.
In addition to the movie, I got to rent a video game for our Atari, and later on, Nintendo game system. No, not Super Nintendo. No, not Nintendo 64 (Hmmm...I just seem to be aging myself further, here.) Nintendo. And Atari.
If you guessed the blobs were malignant tumors, you'd be almost right.
One of my fondest memories (besides the strange olfactory combination of electronics and fish), is waking up at 6:00 Saturday and Sunday mornings, and having the video game all to myself for a couple hours. Even then, the quiet of the house in the morning before the other inhabitants awoke, was blissful.
That’s right. I used to be a morning person. A REAL morning person. At every sleepover party, I was the kid up at six am, talking to some one’s poor haggard mother while all the other girls slept until ten in the morning. I had trouble waiting until an appropriate hour to run over to Best Friend’s house to play every day. I saw the sun rise on a regular basis, for no reason at all.
Fast forward ten years, and things started to change. Every sixteen year old can sleep in, at least until 9:00, without too much effort.
And by the time I got to college, I was a normal human being. I had to set the alarm to be up before 8:00 am. And I could nap - anywhere and everywhere. The rules of napping in public don’t seem to apply to college students, at least not in my college town.
If they didn’t want people sleeping in their shops, they should
take away the comfy armchairs and anything decaf.
All of this just to say, Toddler doesn’t sleep any more. She used to sleep through the night, maybe waking up for a bottle if she wasn’t feeling so good, or if she failed to eat her bedtime snack.
But since she started getting her molars, she’s been up several times a night, usually insisting on a sippy cup of milk before going back down. And by insisting, I mean screaming. No, making that SCREAMING.
Worst part is, though this has been going on for a month or two, there’s no end in sight. Homegirl is the slowest teether ever. Seriously, she’s eighteen months, and only has nine teeth.
We’ve tried replacing milk in the sippy with water, and good old “cry-it-out.” All this results in nothing but night after night of screaming so loud it wakes up the entire household.
So, faithful readers, any suggestions? Because the Sandman has gon' fishin' and doesn’t seem to be returning any time soon.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
No One Dreams About Banking. We All Dream About Man-Eating Bear-Sharks Instead.
On his way out the door today, Husband says, “Don’t forget to stop by the bank today to deposit that check.”
“Bank? Maybe if I had the power of flight or invisibility or something..."
“What the heck? You told me last night you’d go to the bank today.”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”
“I asked you when I came upstairs to bed! I said, ‘Will you go to the bank so we can finally deposit that check,’ and you said, ‘I’LL DO IT TOMORROW.'”
“You have to stop starting conversations with me in my sleep! That’s how we end up in situations like this!”
“What, situations where you go to the bank and deposit a check so we can have money and pay rent, and also do things like not starve?"
“Exactly!”
I lose in the sleep-talking department. But dreaming is a total WIN.
Because unlike Husband, who remembers maybe one dream a year, I remember my dreams at least 3 or 4 times a week. The easiest to remember are the bizarro recurring dreams. I have about 4 recurring dreams, all of which I’ve dreamt about 193,482 times.
What’s especially awesome is that now, when I have one of these dreams, it’s like I’m watching the 3rd rerun of a mediocre television show, and it’s getting kind of old. For example:
“Oh, I know this one. Ok, first you have to fly over the building. Now’s the part where the man-eating shark-bears try to destroy your soul. But don’t worry, they don’t get around to it because you breathe fire on them, etc.”
Unfortunately, I don’t dream about man-eating-shark-bears ALL the time; that would be AWESOME. But I do have reoccurring dreams that....
1) I’m on stage for a dance recital, and I realize I haven’t been to class in about one million years. The music starts, and although I somehow know the steps, I can’t lift my leg past knee-height. I think this is somehow related to the fact that my elbows naturally hyperextend. Therefore, anytime I fall down and catch myself with my hands, I get stress fractures that prevent me from performing basic human functions like brushing my hair and eating.
2) After I earned my law degree, It would be found that I was 2 credits short of obtaining my high school diploma, and in order to retain my J.D. I have to go back to high school to earn the missing credits. And as if going back to high school isn’t EVERY PERSON’S WORST NIGHTMARE, I also can’t find my locker. Except now that I’ve had this dream so many times, I know that my locker is actually in the library stacks, and direct myself there post-haste.
*Note: This is actually better than when I really WAS in high school, where in the first week of each year I’d inevitably forget which locker was mine, and I’d have to go to the administrative office to find out.
3) Then there’s the dream where I’m flying over a city, but I have to make a quick pitstop in the ghetto, and flying down is apparently very difficult and kind of dangerous - think trapeze-artist difficult. Then I have to try to get out of the ghetto, which is kind of like jump-starting myself airborne. Also, I’m dressed sort of like batman.
In conclusion, sleep + talking = FAIL. But sleep + dreaming = WIN. Especially when you can just tell yourself what to do in the dream so it is over as quickly and painlessly as possible.
“Bank? Maybe if I had the power of flight or invisibility or something..."
“What the heck? You told me last night you’d go to the bank today.”
“That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”
“I asked you when I came upstairs to bed! I said, ‘Will you go to the bank so we can finally deposit that check,’ and you said, ‘I’LL DO IT TOMORROW.'”
“You have to stop starting conversations with me in my sleep! That’s how we end up in situations like this!”
“What, situations where you go to the bank and deposit a check so we can have money and pay rent, and also do things like not starve?"
“Exactly!”
I lose in the sleep-talking department. But dreaming is a total WIN.
Because unlike Husband, who remembers maybe one dream a year, I remember my dreams at least 3 or 4 times a week. The easiest to remember are the bizarro recurring dreams. I have about 4 recurring dreams, all of which I’ve dreamt about 193,482 times.
What’s especially awesome is that now, when I have one of these dreams, it’s like I’m watching the 3rd rerun of a mediocre television show, and it’s getting kind of old. For example:
“Oh, I know this one. Ok, first you have to fly over the building. Now’s the part where the man-eating shark-bears try to destroy your soul. But don’t worry, they don’t get around to it because you breathe fire on them, etc.”
Unfortunately, I don’t dream about man-eating-shark-bears ALL the time; that would be AWESOME. But I do have reoccurring dreams that....
1) I’m on stage for a dance recital, and I realize I haven’t been to class in about one million years. The music starts, and although I somehow know the steps, I can’t lift my leg past knee-height. I think this is somehow related to the fact that my elbows naturally hyperextend. Therefore, anytime I fall down and catch myself with my hands, I get stress fractures that prevent me from performing basic human functions like brushing my hair and eating.
I could do this. I just don’t want to.
2) After I earned my law degree, It would be found that I was 2 credits short of obtaining my high school diploma, and in order to retain my J.D. I have to go back to high school to earn the missing credits. And as if going back to high school isn’t EVERY PERSON’S WORST NIGHTMARE, I also can’t find my locker. Except now that I’ve had this dream so many times, I know that my locker is actually in the library stacks, and direct myself there post-haste.
*Note: This is actually better than when I really WAS in high school, where in the first week of each year I’d inevitably forget which locker was mine, and I’d have to go to the administrative office to find out.
Congratulations. We now bestow upon you the title of Juris Doctor.
3) Then there’s the dream where I’m flying over a city, but I have to make a quick pitstop in the ghetto, and flying down is apparently very difficult and kind of dangerous - think trapeze-artist difficult. Then I have to try to get out of the ghetto, which is kind of like jump-starting myself airborne. Also, I’m dressed sort of like batman.
$29.99 is all it takes to make my dream a reality...
In conclusion, sleep + talking = FAIL. But sleep + dreaming = WIN. Especially when you can just tell yourself what to do in the dream so it is over as quickly and painlessly as possible.
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