Do you ever get the feeling...

I need a nap.
Image courtesy of Karen Andrews,
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that something's gotta give?

Does this ever happen to you: You're really excited about something, like a project you're working on or a book you're reading or writing, so you stay up way, way past the time you know you should have gone to bed. And then the next night you do the same thing. And the next. And suddenly you find yourself staying up late every night, month after month, year after year, until you start falling asleep in your coffee and stumble bleary-eyed through every day?

No?

Is it just me?

For the past several years, I've gotten an average of four or five hours of sleep a night. The thing is, I like my quiet time. A quiet house is my refuge. I get up early because I like being able to write when no one else is awake. I like sitting in silence as I enjoy my coffee and the beginning of a new day. I like the peace that comes before the storm of child-activity once the kids are awake and playing/fighting in the living room. And honestly, if I don't have some time to myself before the rest of the family gets up, I'm not a very nice person.

But getting up early is not really a problem in itself, is it? The problem is that I also enjoy having that "me time" at night, so I stay up too late after the kids go to bed—way too late...

So every day I get up early.

And every night I stay up too late.

And both of these things worked fine for a while—years, in fact. But then I discovered something shocking:

I'm getting older.

And these three things—getting up early, staying up late, and aging—don't really mix. Sadly, I'm not in college anymore. I no longer have the ability to pull all-nighters and still function as a human being the next day. This thought makes me sad...

So I need advice. How do you order your day so that you still have time for the things you enjoy and want to do? How do you get all the necessary stuff done and still find time for yourself—and for sleep?

I really need to know the answer.

But right now I just need a nap.

Happy Thursday!

The push and pull

Today's 100 words:

I stayed up too late reading again last night. I never mean to--I know how deeply tired I am and how much my body and mind crave rest since my first child was born five years ago. Before, I used to drink coffee in the mornings because I liked the taste. Now I drink it because I need it to push me closer to awake. Still, as anyone who reads knows, it's hard to put a good book down--no matter the time, no matter how tired, no matter the push/pull of reading love and need for sleep.

On sleep (again)

I've noticed that the older I've gotten, the more I think about sleep--and my lack of it. There are so many things I want to do each day that often sleep seems secondary and unimportant. I woke this morning after getting about five hours of rest, and my tingly hands and tired eyes led to today's 100 words:

I need to get more sleep. Nearly every morning, I wake up with tingly hands, something that always signals I haven't had enough rest. I've gotten myself into habits that are hard for me to break: getting up early so I can have an hour or two of quiet time and going to bed late because I like to read and write after the kids are asleep. Most nights I get between four and six hours of rest, which my nearly forty-year-old body can't seem to handle anymore. Something has to give. Reading, writing... Sleep is important, too.

Snippets

My husband went back to work today after having had ten days off for the holidays. I'm sad. Even though I as a mom never get a vacation, it was nice to have some extra help around here.

This morning I picked up a copy of Charles Bukowski's The Pleasures of the Damned. It's a volume of poems written between 1951 and 1993. At nearly 550 pages, it will take me a while to read, and I'm looking forward to starting it when I get a spare moment.

Right now my priority needs to be sleep. My two-year-old daughter has croup, and last night she woke me up three times. I think I might have gotten three or four hours of sleep in total, which is just not enough. The kids are eating lunch right now, and I think I might try to sneak a rest when they finish--one ear open and listening to them play, of course. I'm crossing my fingers that they'll let me.

So that's life at our house today. How are things going at yours?

Getting older

Today's 100 words:

My husband, who is thirteen years older than I am, keeps telling me what hell it is to get old--how hard it is to watch things that previously worked well start to deteriorate, like eyesight and knee joints. I'm not quite to that point, but I have noticed in the past year or so that I can no longer go without as much sleep as I could in my college days. Back then I could survive for days on a couple of hours, but now I long for days when I can sleep for more than five hours a night.

Short sleeping

This morning's 100 words:

I slept wrong last night and woke up with pain radiating from my left shoulder. I was so tired -- completely exhausted from these last few days of family and travel -- that I don't remember anything after my head hit the pillow. I wish I felt more rested, but I think I've built up too much of a sleep deficit to ever truly catch up. My husband calls it "short sleeping," and I've been doing that ever since my son was born nearly five years ago: going to bed late, getting up during the night, seeing the sunrise again and again...

But have I learned my lesson?

This morning's 100 words:

 

My hands are numb this morning, the way they always get when I haven't had enough sleep. It's a pins-and-needles feeling, and I don't know why it happens, but I wake up with it whenever I don't allow myself to rest. The stupid thing is that I know I need to get more sleep, but each night I go to bed well past the hour I should. I stay up late reading, usually, or writing, then finally turn off my light for my scant five hours of sleep, knowing I'll complain the next day about how tired I am.