Damn that Alarm!

I am a notorious snoozer.  It is common knowledge among those who have spent morning time with me that I am not a morning person.  I do not enjoy mornings.  I do not enjoy rolling out of bed and getting ready for work every single day... well 6 out of 7 days a week anyway.  Mornings are a stupid thing that I wish had never been invented.  So yes, I hit the snooze button a lot in the morning.  It's a terrible habit that inevitably has me rushing around in the morning tripping over dogs as I try to get out the door on time.

Today was one of those days.  It got me thinking that really I should try to break the habit of snoozing so many times in the morning.  Googled it and here is what I found:

Set a timer so that a bright light turns on simultaneously with your alarm.  In theory... good.  But I've read that it isn't good to startle yourself awake.  A bright light in the face might go under that heading.

Consider setting an outdoor-rated timer which turns a space heater on in your bedroom, for about an hour before you want to wake up. The idea here is to wake up when you're warm.  I don't know about you but I don't necessarily enjoy waking up overheated and sweaty in my bed.  Just doesn't say "Good morning" to me.
 
If you drink coffee, get a coffee pot with a timer.  Perfection.  Coffee is always the answer.  Course the coffee is in the kitchen..
 
Put your alarm clock on the other side of the room.  I tried this one in high school.  What ended up happening is I would jump out of bed, run to the alarm, turn it off, and run back to bed.  Then I was just pissed.
 
Set a second alarm on your cell phone, computer, another alarm clock, or whatever you can hear from wherever you need to put it. Place the other alarm by your coffee pot, in the bathroom, downstairs, in the hall, or whatever works in your home. Then set it for 5 minutes after the first alarm on your regular alarm clock.  Actually not a bad idea.  May take this advice. 
 
If all else fails, lock the alarm clock in a box with a combination lock and attach the internal clock speaker to an external stereo speaker. Again, I think this would just piss me the hell off.  Pissed the hell off is not a good way to start the day.  Plus, on my cellphone (which is my alarm) I have it set to do math problems if I want to snooze.  I manage that just fine.  Maybe harder math problems... 
 
Consider super gluing your snooze button in order to make it impossible to use. Super gluing my cell phone would not and never will be a good idea.
 
Appreciate waking up.  One of the most important steps for me was changing my mindset about waking up. ...What the hell kind of advice is this?  It is like someone saying "Love thyself."  I do love myself and I do appreciate the fact that I'm not dead in the morning.  Asking my to appreciate my alarm going off is like asking me to hug a cactus. 
 
Set an alarm you’re happy to wake up to.  This is good advice.  I HATE HATE HATE HATE the beeping sound of an alarm.  If hell was a sound it would be a beeping alarm.  So I wake up to a more relaxing noise that slowly gets louder with time.  I have yet to find a really nice tone of rain or waves or something though.  That would be ideal. 
 
Have something to do / a reason you are getting up.  ...If I didn't have a reason to get up why would I set my alarm?   
 
Set a short goal.  My goal for waking up at 6am was technically only for one week. But after that week, I kept going.  Good advice.  But this takes dedication and will power...  *cries* 
 
Go to bed earlier.  Amen.  And no jokes about how I'm 80 years old.  My ideal time to go to bed is 9:30.  That week off I had for Christmas has just completely wacked out my sleep schedule though and I haven't been doing that.  I need to get back to that. 
 
Don’t sleep too comfortably.  ...Okay whoever gave this advice just needs to smack themselves.  That's all I'll dignify that one with. 
 
Try to wake up in the right cycle.  I was just reading an article about this actually.  You don't want to randomize when you wake because it could interrupt a REM sleep cycle.  I'm not sure how much I believe that but it's worth a try. 
Turn on the lights.  Already do this because, as stated above, I spend a lot of time in the morning dodging dogs and the cat.  Always easier not to step on them if the light is on. 
 
Drink some water.  Make it coffee instead of water and I'm there.   
 
Wake up at the same time every day.  I'll try.   
 
Commit.  *sigh*  Yeah yeah yeah... will power and all.

I get the idea.  I just have to put my nose to the grindstone and do it.  Damnit.  Damn the world for waking up earlier than I would prefer!  Why can't we all just work and live at night and sleep during the day?  Works for the owls!!!

2013 is out of the gate and... tired

So far 2013 has been exhausting.  Yesterday I swore I was going to catch up on all this stuff but that didn't happen.  I mostly lazed about.  I thought really hard about being productive so that should count for something.

I've been staying at my sister's house while she and my brother-in-law are in Hawaii.  Lucky bastards.  I've actually liked it though.  Their house is cozy.  Lucy, the beagle, was behaving herself for a while there.  We had one incident the first night were she was being a jerk to Whitman.  Whitman, in his infinite grace (yeah right!), took it very well and I didn't have a dog fight on my hands.  Good behavior didn't last though.  Last night I left for only about an hour to run down to my house.  It wasn't planned so I was forced to leave my two medium sized pizzas.  Lucy suffers from gluttony so she'll pretty much eat anything not nailed down, as it were.  I put the pizzas way up and back on the counter thinking they were safe from this little beagle.  Nope.  When I got back, my dogs were hiding in the corner, obviously having tried to talk Lucy out of it and fearing they would be in trouble since she didn't listen.  Lucy had the pizza boxes ripped apart and strewn all over the place.  No more pizza.  Sad.  And bad because Lucy's stomach was severely distended.  Well I took several hours trying to decide what to do because, of course, it was a holiday.  How do dogs always know it is a holiday?  They always do something to get into trouble on holidays.  Never fails.  Ultimately, at 9:30pm I decided to go ahead and take her in.  I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep because I was so worried about her and I wouldn't want to leave her alone today without knowing she was going to be okay.

So I bundled her off to the emergency vet and actually got pretty prompt service.  In and out in an hour and 15 minutes.  That's got to be some kind of record.  Once I got there I couldn't be too mad at her.  There was this woman there just bawling because she'd just lost her dog.  So it made me grateful that Lucy, although an idiot, wasn't dying and would be okay.  As much as I complain about her, I do love her and I'd never forgive myself if something happened to her while I was watching her.  The vet was shocked that she'd eaten so much and did some xrays to make sure it wasn't flipping her stomach or anything else.  When she came back she told me she very rarely sees dogs with more distended stomachs than Lucy.  Plus it being so cheesy and high in fat, it was a good thing to get it out of her so that it didn't effect her pancreas.  They induced vomiting and got most if it out of her and sent her home good as new.  It was worth it to go there just to avoid having to clean up that mess I think.  Another fun Lucy story.

In other news I'm just completely exhausted.  My sleep schedule is so messed up after having a week off that it's going to be hard for me to get back on schedule.  This is why I am so careful with my sleep schedule because it really effects me if there is the slightest change.  Next time I have time off I'm going to keep my schedule on track as much as possible.  That way I'm not dragging so much when I have to get back to my normal routine.

Other than that, I have nothing new to report.  More on the house later.

Sleepy

Here's something you should know about me, I am careful with my sleep schedule.  At least I try to be.  I used to be really good at it: going to bed at 9:30, sleeping well, and waking up feeling rested.  I didn't have caffeine past 5pm (you're all shocked I know because I worship coffee) and I changed my alarm so that it would wake me up slowly instead of jolting me out of sleep.  For a couple of years, it was great.

Now before that, when I still lived in Boulder and was dealing with a lot of stress and other things, I pretty much was an insomniac.  I would be exhausted all the time but be unable to sleep.  My body wanted to soooo badly but my mind would wake up and be going a hundred miles a minute as soon as I tried to go to bed.  Mostly, I would lay awake in bed while the whole house was quiet.  I would have gotten a lot of constructive thinking done if my brain was actually functioning rather than just churning uselessly.  That might be why I have a lot of movies; I would spend all those hours at night watching movies.  Then morning would come and I'd get up and immediately my brain and body would turn to sludge.

Have you guys ever seen Fight Club?  Insomnia is described perfectly in that movie.

Insomnia Clip 

"With insomnia nothing is real.  Everything is far away.  Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.  When you have insomnia you are never really asleep and you are never really awake."

That's it exactly and it was horrible.

At night my mind wouldn't shut up.  During the day, I had to struggle to function at all.  The only time I could sleep was a nap in the afternoon.  I would sleep so deeply and so wonderfully but... I could barely ever manage it between school and work.  And that, right there, is why I had to take a medical leave and re-think things.  I had to refocus myself and get things back on track.  The only thing I enjoyed ever was going to work at the vet clinic/boarding facility and interacting with the dogs.  That was when I decided I wanted to do that with my life.  That and during that time I think Vallie was really the only thing that kept me going through the insomnia and depression.  (Yeah, for those of you who don't know, I have depression.  It hasn't flared up in years and I think that's because I keep a real close eye on my sleep schedule and it helps me function.)  Anyway, I finally managed to overcome my insomnia because I went and backpacked Europe.  I think it was the perfect storm because it shocked my system just enough that it jolted me out of my bad sleep habits physically and it also changed me mentally.  That was the happiest I have ever been in my life.  And I never ever want to go back to being that way.  I am not myself that way.  I was zombie me, and not the fun flesh eating kind.

So the fact that I haven't really slept well in 2 weeks scares me.  I managed to sleep alright last weekend some but then that went right out the window this week.  I have to sleep!  I'm so exhausted and I hate that.

Tonight I am going to sleep if I have to kill everyone on the face of the Earth to do it.  Well no... but I certainly am kicking Whitman, Gerani and Theo out of my room tonight.  So help me if Whitman had woken me up one more time last night I was going to beat the tar out of him... that is I would have but it was doubtful that I could have summoned the energy.  Also, I'm going camping this weekend so either that will be enough of a diversion from my normal schedule that I'll be able to get things back on track when I get back into town or I'll have relaxed and refocused enough that I'll be able to do it.

If that fails, then I'm headed for the doctor.  Before I had these really gentle sleep aids that helped me turn my brain off just enough that I managed to sleep here and there when I took them.  Course I didn't take them a lot because I was scared of getting hooked on them.  But they're a good tool to at least make me fall asleep at a decent time.

Needless to say, I'm dragging today.  I can't wait to get off work and go back home for a nap.


Nap.....  Happy warm thoughts.