7AM is my enemy. I’m a natural night owl, I prefer being awake during the wee hours, feeling alone in the world and quietly productive. It’s been all hell changing my internal clock so that I can function as a parent.
Most days Tori is up before the alarm, but I love the rare days where she oversleeps and she’s an adorably grumpy pseudo teenager. Her hair is at that length where it sticks up all over the place when she wakes up, requiring water and detangler to tame, and she pouts and stomps and fusses until she has that moment that a switch flips and suddenly, there she is, ready to start her day.
I am continuing to be crazy busy, and I find myself longing to have the midnight hours to concentrate on writing and fun stuff like prettifying the blog, that sort of thing. But I valiantly head up to bed at 11:30 each night, usually only to lie awake reading for hours while Charlie slumbers next to me (admittedly, having that time to read is pretty nice).
In the morning, I only have one job, and that’s to get Tori dressed for school, and hound her until she brushes her teeth and washes her face. Charlie makes her breakfast and takes her to the school bus, and I usually go back to bed for a bit because, of course, I was up half the night. Usually, this doesn’t help me feel less tired. In fact, I think it makes it worse.
I’ve noticed, recently, that I feel rather awful. My weight has climbed up a bit again (sigh) because we’ve changed our meals to accommodate some of my mom’s tastes and, while I agree with her on things like fresh-baked flaky biscuits being delicious with my spaghetti, I don’t need to eat them (nor the butter I add). I also am not someone who generally consumes a lot of white flour on my own, preferring whole grain, but I’ve been very heavy on the white flour lately. And don’t even get me started on my out-of-nowhere love for Snickers bars.
All these means that I spend too much time couch surfing and not enough time having dance parties with Tori.
So I’m switching things up a bit, trying to jump-start my energy, and help myself to feel better. Because dancing is in order, for sure.
Speaking of dancing, if you’re free on Sunday I highly recommend you go shop for something at JC Penney for the Shop In to support Ellen Degeneres and fight against the assholes at the One Million Moms. I’ll be there!
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh, I am so with you. I would love to find a magic spell that could make me a morning person…
I am so not a morning person. Morning suck…but, dance parties seriously rock. Hope you find a way to stabilize your life.
SO not a morning person. My family is often pissed at me when I visit because I don’t bound out of bed all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6am like they do. They take it very personally for some reason.
I get the most done between 10pm and 3am. It’s quiet, no one bothers me, I can run the DVR in the background, and do my thing.
The rest of the world does not run at those hours though, so it does get problematic sometimes. But it’s not like I have a choice to be a night or a day person. My body likes what it likes. And so a lot of my working life, I worked nights. It was perfect for me.
J.
I am the exact opposite. I have no problem whatsoever being awake and productive at 6:00 am but after 9:00 pm I am useless.
I’ve become a night owl, mostly because I, too, need my quiet time to refocus & stop my kiddo-induced ADD. In my younger days, I used to be a morning person; often out of bed before the sun came up. But then my son came up (HA!), and changed everything.
Although sometimes I wake up at 3:30 to pee, and just stay awake for the day. I crash hard around dinnertime, but it’s nice to have the world completely to myself for a few hours.
Also, on the too much fatness? Oh, me too. I’m about ready to torch the obscene amount of gummy hearts my well-intentioned husband brought home last week. If you figure out how to kick up your energy level, please let the exhausted amongst us in on your secret. :-)
I am also a night person. I do my best work from 12am-6am because there are no distractions.
Luckily, my son is 15 years old, so I don’t have to “get him ready” in the mornings any more.
Dancing ALWAYS makes me feel better too. Enjoy those dance parties with your daughter!!
I was a serious night owl before I had kids. I had even arranged my work schedule so I could get in around 10 and stay late. Once I had kids everything changed. I started getting up at 5:30 am so I could pump before my girls woke up and now although I still love staying up late, I also appreciate getting up 1/2 hour before the family and having that first cup of coffee and reading the news or planning dinner or playing Scrabble with myself. I recommend getting up earlier than everyone else on purpose for a few days. It will hurt at first, but once you value that morning time and your body adjusts I think you will really begin to appreciate it and let your body relax at night so you can wake up for it in the morning. Hope that helps :)
it is 11:36 at night. I do not want to go to sleep. even though – when I get up in the morning we are moving all of our family’s shit from one shit hole to another. (did I say that word too much?) Anyway…. our vacation rental sucks. BUT … back to the point – I’m going to be rousted at 6am by a grumpy husband and deal with 3 kids all day, moving, and training a service dog. OMG. Going to bed. And, i’m so with you on the weight thing – but not the mother thing. I would kill her.