My Early Morning with Abe

Back in January I posted a DC 'to do' list for the year.

This morning I had a very DC experience that wasn't on my list, but was a must do for one of my friends. She's moving back to Philly next weekend and one of the things on her bucket list was sunrise from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Now it's well established that I'm NOT a morning person, but, I am always willing to help a friend in need and, going hand in hand here, not willing to send a friend out to sit out on the National Mall in the middle of the night alone.

(Yes, sunrise is my equivalent of the middle of the night. Especially since the published sunrise time, the one they tell you on the news or when you look at the weather report is very, very misleading. You see, that's the time you actually see the sun break the horizon, but by that point it's already been light out for easily 30 minutes!)

I digress. So my friend really wanted to do this and I agreed to tag along on the early morning adventure. We did some research on weather, timing, parking and decided that today was our day.

This morning when we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial at 5:40 am it looked like this:

That's the moon over to the right. Sigh...

But, it didn't look like that for long, as we timed things just right. Soon the sky started to turn shades of pink and orange, slowly changing to blue, lighting up the sky.

Abe gets his first view of the sun, at 6:25 am

So pretty.

Of course now, at 7 pm I'm so struggling to keep my eyes open, but really, the early morning views, on a gorgeous spring day, in the company of a good friend was more than worth the missed sleep!

Sleep Tracking

A few weeks after I got my iPhone I was looking through the app store at their list of most popular apps and saw one called Sleep Cycle. I was intrigued, so I forked over $.99 and downloaded it.

The basic premise is that setting your alarm clock to wake you up at a specific time means you are likely to wake up in midst of a deep sleep and be groggy. The app has you set a 30 minute window for when the alarm should go off and "during this phase Sleep Cycle will monitor signals from your body to wake you softly, when you are in the lighest possible sleep state."

Yes, she's cute, but not helpful
when it comes to sleep tracking!

Kinda mumbo jumbo, especially since nine times out of 10 I wake up before the alarm goes off, but I like the fact that keeping track of how much sleep I'm getting a night.

It also thinks it's telling me my sleep quality, based on how much I'm moving around during sleep I guess, but I'm guessing that number isn't the most accurate because of, well, her --->

At least I hope the fact that my darling cat spends the night wandering between her spot curled up at the foot of the bed, tucked in to the small of my back and or generally some of it attempting to share my pillow is the reason that my sleep quality at home is atrocious compared to my sleep quality when I'm either in a hotel or staying at a friend's house.

According to these my best nights of sleep have been at a Spring Hill Suites in Savannah, GA and the guest room at my friend's house on the Eastern Shore. Probably true, but unfortunately not feasibly replicated on a nightly basis. 

So while quality isn't really a fair judge of the app, it's making me think about my sleep patterns more, and I've definitely been trying to move bed time up to a more reasonable hour... which, means I better wrap this post up and get some sleep!

So very deja vu

The whole reason I started this blog was because I often found myself crafting blog posts in my head, yet I had no place to put them. 

The longer I have it (you know, all of 6 months) the more I find myself crafting the same post a second time. 

I'm traveling for work again this week and I woke up in my lovely hotel room this morning ready to complain about how the bed was amazingly comfy yet I got crappy sleep. Hmmm... that seems a bit familiar, no?

So I guess it's good I'm consistent, right? (Yes, I know, kinda a stretch.) I does make me laugh though, thinking about this post, where I complained that my business trips are all pretty much interchangeable. Right down to the comfy bed but crappy sleep equation apparently!

An Open Letter to my favorite 3 1/2 year old

Dear Bug,

As we've discussed many times, you are an early bird and I am a night owl. I know, I know, you aren't a bird and I'm not an owl, but it's a figure of speech that means you like to wake up early and I like to go to sleep late. Which means I don't like to wake up early. Really, I don't.

So this morning when you accidentally called me at 6:49 I know you were already an hour into your day. You had eaten breakfast, watched an episode of Dora or Imagination Movers and were moving on to coloring. I on the other hand still had 56 minutes until my alarm was set to go off. 56 minutes is a long time Bug!

I tried to go back to sleep, but Emmy is an early bird like you and took notice that I was awake ever so briefly. She wanted some attention so she started headbutting me and tapping me with her paw until I got up. She is one persistent kitty cat!

So I gave in, and started my day before 7 am. Ick!

I'd like to make a deal with you, ok Bug? When I stay at your house, or we go to the beach, it's totally ok for you to wake me up early. Because while I may be just a touch grumpy about it then, at least I get to hang out with you, and play fun games like go fish or old maid or color pictures. But when you call and wake me up early then I'm just up. Without the fun part. So, no more early morning phone calls, ok? Tell mommy to keep that phone away from you. Or the screen on lock. Anything to keep it from dialing my number before 8 am M-F and... 9:30 on the weekends, just to be safe.

I'm glad we got that settled.

Love,

Aunt Stacy

Who Needs Sleep?

I'm traveling for work this week, staying in a lovely hotel room with a super cozy king sized bed. The bed is well stocked with pillows the way I like them (kinda squishy), the thermostat in the room actually worked well so the temperature was perfect and my hallway and neighbors were quiet throughout the night.

So why did I get crappy, crappy sleep?

I kept waking up and checking the clock. The best was at 3:32 when I looked, went back to sleep and then woke up again, convinced hours had gone by and it was 3:51. Not happy! I wasn't paranoid about oversleeping - this is the one morning of the four I'll be here where I don't really have to be anywhere until around 11.

The actual worst part is I should have expected this. It's my usual travel pattern. No matter where I go the first night of sleep away from home is ick. I was just sooo tired, and the bed was sooo comfy.... I kinda thought all would be well.

Ugh. So, now I'm off to yawn my way through day one while thinking only 3 more sleeps til I'm home!

Bedtime

My goal tonight was to go to sleep by midnight. It's 12:37 am as I'm typing this and I don't know that sleep is imminent.

But, I napped from 8:45ish til 11. Which has to count for something, right?

Tonight was one of those nights where I just could not stay awake. Before taking the long(ish) nap I cat napped several times while watching the evening news. Actually, since I can't say I remember much between hanging up the phone with my mom around 8 and actually turning off the lights at 8:45, I can probably roll back that start time on the nap by a bit.

Naps, are good. Sleep is good. Being perpetually awake til 1 am or later, well, that's bad.

I've read an abundance of articles about how to get better sleep - set a routine, only use your bedroom for sleep, don't watch TV in bed, etc. The problem is, I pretty much live in my room. Sure, there are other rooms in my apartment, and I'll occasionally spend an evening reading or watching TV from the living room but... 90% of the time that I'm home, it's spent in my room.

Changing the things that could (would?) impact my sleep habits means changing my life habits as a whole. And, well, we all know just how well I do with change.

For tonight, I'm still chalking this one up as a win as I may not have gone to sleep before midnight, but I still got sleep prior to midnight. And that my friends, is what they call a small victory.