Sleeping Late

"The bed is a bundle of paradoxes:

we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret;

we make up our minds every night to leave it early,

but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late."

-- Rev. Charles Caleb Colton, 

Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words:

Addressed to Those Who Think

Dismantled alarm clock 10-1-14

"The alarm in the morning? 

Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting

the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent 

version of Schubert's seventh symphony.

And I've rigged it up so that exactly 7:30 every morning

it falls from the ceiling onto my face."

-- Stephen Fry

"If people were meant to pop out of bed,

we'd all sleep in toasters."

-- Unknown

Something To Help Me Fall Asleep

"O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

and steep my sense in forgetfulness?"

-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV

Polymer clay head 8-12-14

"Many things -- such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly --

are done worst when we try hardest to do them."

-- C.S. Lewis

Because sometimes I just can't do it on my own, no matter how hard I try.

Good Sleep Hygiene

"I cannot alter the past, but the future is very much in my hands."

-- Mary Lydon Simonsen, 

The Perfect Bride For Mr. Darcy

Self portrait 7-17-14

"Good 'hygiene' is anything that helps you to have a healthy life."

-- The American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Sleep hygiene isn't a very sexy topic.

It's about as sexy as oral hygiene -- stuff like brushing and flossing my teeth and scraping the gunk off my tongue.

As un-sexy as it is, though, I know good and well that if I neglect good oral hygiene, my teeth will rot and my breath will stink and I'll pay the price (and it ain't cheap) at the dentist. And that's super, duper un-sexy. So I do all the stuff. I follow the protocol and maintain a very clean, healthy mouth.

I also know that if I neglect good sleep hygiene, my sleep will decay. Still, I fall into patches where I don't do the stuff. I neglect the protocol. I do things I know I shouldn't, and don't do things I know I should, and little by little I settle for rottener and rottener sleep. And I pay the price. My sleep stinks, and I not only feel rotten, I feel rotten about it because I could have easily avoided the problem.

I've been playing fast and loose with the sleep hygiene rules lately. God knows I know them well enough by now -- inside outside upside down. I could recite them in my sleep, if I was sleeping. I know these guidelines are good for me. I know I'll be happier and healthier if I obey them.

And yet.

Long story short, things have gotten a little out of hand and it's time to clean up my sleep routine.

Again.

It's time to snuggle back up to the rules of good sleep hygiene so that tonight, and tomorrow night, and the nights after that, I can enjoy good, healthy sleep.

It's all in my hands.