One of Those Days!

One of those GOOD days, that is! :-)

I woke up at 9:00am sharp today feeling GREAT! It's not like I jumped out of bed singing, but I imagine that what I felt was, well, somewhat normal for a change. These are the days that are so rare that I can count them on one hand. And today was one of them!!!

I opened my eyes right away, looked at the clock, sat up and *gasp* got out of bed! My body worked. My brain worked. I was STARVING. I had energy. It was...strange.

While I waited for my Coffeebot to brew up a pot, I cleaned my kitchen. I mean really cleaned it. Did the dishes, cleaned the counters, scrubbed vegan stew splatters off the stove, swept the floor. All before 9:30am. Who knew???

I simultaneously love and loathe these rare mornings. I love feeling what "normal" is like, and getting things accomplished early in the morning. Okay, so 9:00am isn't exactly the crack of dawn. But for me? It's early. Even when I'm awake by then, I usually can't think straight, walk straight, or get anything of value done before noon. So this makes me happy. :-D

I loathe them because I know it's a rare and special treat. Tomorrow, it'll be back to my normal and waking up will be my biggest struggle of the day. It'll be an obstacle to overcome again rather than a joy. It's hard to actually know what I'm missing, to feel in every cell of my body what my mornings would be like if I didn't have DSPS. These wonderful, energetic mornings remind me of how screwed up I really am.

So I turn last night over and over in my mind. What was different? I come up flat. Nothing. I worked until 10:30pm, analyzing data, writing, and organizing photos from the field. I watched a couple hours of tv - Last Restaurant Standing, Food Network Challenge. Hmm...they're both food shows! Nah. Probably not relevant. I went to bed and read until about 2:15am. Started a new book, Guests of the Sheik. It's an ethnography of an Iraqi village. Bottom line? A pretty typical night for me. Not a thing out of the ordinary.

The last week was tough though. My circadian rhythm was thrown all over the map. I flew to Dallas, then to Chicago, and had to work bright and early in the morning. I only got 1 or 2 hours of sleep a night for much of that trip. When I got home, it took me about an equal number of days to catch up. I slept 10 or 11 hours a night on Friday and Saturday nights. I was almost late to a 3pm party on Sunday. On Monday, I slept about 8 hours. Then? On Tuesday? 6 hours and 45 minutes. And I felt refreshed and energetic!

Maybe I should skip sleep more often? Shift my sleep schedule to almost none some days and half the day on other days? Would my body somehow move back to a middle ground then?

I don't know. I don't understand it, but for today, I'll take it!