To Sleep...

I woke up at 4:30 this morning and couldn't go back to sleep. There are a lot of things going on right now, and for whatever reason, I couldn't clear my mind enough to go back to sleep. Joy.

Sleeping patterns amuse me. Back in high school and the first part of college, I got wayyy too little sleep. This came back to bite me in the ass after I got mono the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Fayetteville. It took several months to fully come back from that, and I never quite had the same ability to go with 3 or 4 hours of sleep for days on end.

I rarely pulled all nighters after that first year of college, and never pulled them in law school. But I never slept all that great, either. I've always been a very light sleeper, and waking up in the middle of the night usually meant I'd be awake for about half an hour. And let's not even start on how long it might take me to fall asleep. J can be snoring in a matter of 30 seconds while it used to take me half an hour to fall asleep. There were nights I wanted to hit him 'cause I'd have to listen to his ass sleeping for half an hour while I tossed and turned.

Then? We had kids. Talk about fucking up your sleep schedule, right?

Once we got past the whole "sleeping through the night" deal, my sleep patterns drastically changed. I no longer considered myself a light sleeper, but I seemed to need a lot more sleep on a regular basis. After we got the kiddos settled into their routines, my pattern seemed to require sleeping from 10:30 or 11:00 until 6:30. I'd get 8 full hours of sleep, and still not be ready to get up. Hell, sometimes I'd go to sleep around 9:00, and sleep through until the morning. I'm not sure if it was my body still recovering from having kids, or what, but it frustrated the hell out of me. How was it possible to need that much sleep?

This summer, though, I feel like I've fallen back into some old patterns. I'm still falling asleep fairly easily most nights, but I don't feel like I need as much sleep. I'm staying up later, and occasionally waking up at the ass crack of dawn, unable to go back to sleep. See: this morning. I feel asleep around 10 last night, and woke up at 4, ready to get up. I'm ok with that - gives me a bit of planning time in the morning, and a chance to write a thoroughly mundane blog post without interruption. Go me.

And that's all fine. As long as it doesn't portend the beginning of the blue hair years, I consider it a good thing. When we start talking dinner at 4, bed at 7, and coffee at 3am? Then I'm gonna have an issue.