Lesser of Two Evils?

Three weeks later, my sleep schedule is still a bit lark-ish, although more complicated than I would like to see. Once my pattern had shifted to a 7-8am wake up time, I decided to start using melatonin again to see if I could maintain that pattern. I'd tried it before, without much luck. It would help me fall asleep earlier, but didn't do much for my wake up time. And it only did that for a few days before it stopped working.

I thought that maybe now that my body had shifted in response to the stress, I could use the melatonin to maintain that shift indefinitely. So I busted out the Plantidotes Nite-trition:


Good stuff! You know what? It's working. If I don't take it, I sleep until my normal 9-10am wake up time and generally wake up a lot during the night now too. (Yeah, the ongoing nightmares don't help.) But if I do take it, about half an hour before bed, I sleep through the night and wake up between 7:00 and 8:00am. Amazing!!!!

I know there are all kinds of theories about when you should take the melatonin, but this is what's working for me now, and I'm not going to mess with it. This way, I still don't wake up early enough to get to a corporate job or some such thing, but it's perfect for my work-at-home lifestyle.

Unfortunately, normalcy still comes with a price. The Sleep Hangovers are at their worst ever, with no sign of letting up. This means that some days it doesn't matter that I wake up early because I'm literally so nauseated that I can't get out of bed for an hour or two anyway. Other days I get up just long enough to stumble to the bathroom and throw up, then crawl back in bed waiting for it to go away. If I fall back asleep until my normal 9-10am, I'll wake up feeling just fine.

Plus, the complete lack of coordination has definitely taken a toll on me physically. I now have a bona fide Sleep Hangover related injury.


And no, there's just no way to take a flattering photo of your own thigh. My leg isn't really that wavy, that's light coming in through wavy window glass. That is, however, a very bad tan line. I drive a convertible, and that's the price you pay. :-P

How, you ask, did this happen??? I tried to make tea with a bad sleep hangover. Not the smartest thing I've ever done, obviously. I have a vintage oven that is definitely not up to 2008 safety standards, especially that really sharp part of the oven door handle. Shall we say my spatial judgment was, oh, a *bit* off? I ran smack into it and ended up curled up on the floor, howling in pain and bleeding.

So...again I ask, is it worth it?? I'm still not sure which schedule I prefer. When I wake up at my normal time, I'm always a bit groggy and mornings are never chirpy, bright and happy. But I can make tea without killing myself, and I can keep it down when I drink it.

Those are good things, I think.

The experiment continues...send vibes that I live through it!

Sleep Hangovers

Two weeks later, and my strangely normal sleeping patterns continue. Hmm. But the side effects are starting to add up.

The morning nausea isn't going away, it's getting worse. Much worse. I wake up every morning feeling hungover, even though I haven't had any alcohol since The Blindside. This, of course, is despite strong encouragement from my friends who truly believe that booze is the cure for whatever ails you. Not so. Alcohol is a depressant and that is exactly what I don't need right now. If I drink when I'm already depressed or stressed out about something, it just intensifies the feeling and makes everything worse. So I don't. Besides, I already feel like crap and I don' t need to feel worse in the morning.

This time though, I can't seem to avoid that sick hangover feeling. Yes, I'm waking up really, really, super early for me. (I'm working on this blog before 9:00am!!!! Never in a million years thought that would happen.) At first, it almost seemed worth it. A couple weeks in, and I'm not so sure anymore.

Not only is the nausea getting worse, but so are the general signs of sleep deprivation. I'm waking up earlier than usual, but not falling asleep earlier. I'm usually a long sleeper - 9 to 10 hours is ideal, and I feel pretty good when I can get that in at the right time of day. Since The Blindside, I'm only getting about 7 hours a night.

That's clearly not enough. I'm exhausted in the afternoon, and I'm starting to lack focus throughout the day rather than just in the mornings. I tripped carrying groceries up my three steps yesterday. Damn that hurt. I've become a total klutz All. Day. Long. My house is a total mess because I just don't have the energy to do anything more than the basic survival stuff. I have piles of books all over the living room floor that I pulled out for work, but I just don't have the energy to lift them back up to put them away. I managed to assemble (and use) the Spinning bike I bought on that fateful day, but the box is huge and needs to be torn down, cut up, and hauled out to the recycling bin. I just can't do it.

I'm torn. I love being up early. I truly love mornings. That surprises me as much as anyone. But I want to be able to wake up early and not feel like I downed a few shots of tequila and mixed it with a whole bottle of Napa cab the night before. All the hangover, none of the buzz. It's just not right.

How to Become a Lark

Well, it's been a while since I've posted here. I got sidetracked by lots of work travel, then getting my heart ripped out by the very guy who made up the word "burgermare." Yes, he's gone. Moving on...

The interesting thing is that in the week since it happened, my body chemistry seems to have completely changed. First, my sleep patterns were all over the clock. For a couple of days I couldn't sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. 12-2am, 4:30-7:00am, 3:30-5:00pm, etc. It was insanity. And when I was tired, I couldn't keep my eyes open for One. More. Second. I'd drop off to sleep wherever I happened to be, in the middle of whatever I happened to be doing.

The next few days, I woke up around 4:30am, wide awake. I had mixed feelings about it. It was really nice to be up early, out of bed, and getting a head start on the day. I found that I truly love mornings. The light is beautiful, the streets are peaceful. So. This is what I'm missing. Hmm.

For the next couple of days, it was 7:00am. I realized that I'd started drifting back to "normal" and the feelings got even more mixed. Could I stop the process here?? That would be perfect! If I could settle in on an 11pm - 7am sleep cycle, I'd be the happiest newly single girl in the world. Is it possible?

But on the flip side, whatever hormonal freak-out was waking me up early did absolutely nothing for those weird side-effects. I wasn't groggy, but I was still uncoordinated. And the morning nausea? Increased tenfold. Usually, I just feel a bit queasy when I wake up. My gag reflex is super-sensitive, and brushing my teeth is tricky. I can't eat for at least an hour, often more.

All of that stuff was intensified, or just oddly opposite. Instead of being a bit queasy, I've actually thrown up every morning. Instead of being groggy, my heart races out of control in a panic. I'm not just uncoordinated, I can barely walk. I knock everything over and I've broken two glass bottles of moisturizer just trying to reach for my toothbrush. I don't remember anything. What was I looking for? Oh yeah, deodorant. So then I grab the hairspray and wonder again, what was I looking for? My love for coffee? It's turned to loathing. I can't even imagine drinking coffee in the morning right now. The thought makes me sick.

It all makes me ponder the causes of this crazy thing, and wonder if there really is a solution out there. We know there's a genetic component. We know there's a hormonal component. What insane combination of things made stress and emotional trauma override my natural rhythms? And how long will it last? Can we figure it out, bottle it, and force ourselves to become like everyone else?

Last night, I wasn't tired until 1:00am. I slept until 8:15am, which is still quite early for me. But my wake-up time is moving back toward my own personal normal, and I think my brief glimpse of Lark Life might be coming to an end.

I'll miss it. Truly.

Wanna break my heart? It was almost worth it.

Drifting away...

Ah yes, I've begun to drift again. Do other people drift like this?

Just when I think I've settled into a nice pattern of sleeping between 12 and 1am and waking between 9 and 10am, it suddenly shifts. I wish I could blame it on the switch to Daylight Saving Time, but I can't. I can never quite tell when it's going to happen, but this time it really kicked into action on Friday.

We were out a bit late - at a friend's birthday party - and got to sleep a bit later than usual. Still, it wasn't too far off the mark - certainly not far enough that I was worried about not being able to wake up on Saturday morning. Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes, looked at the clock, and saw that it was 11:30am already! Yikes. A couple of hours past my own personal "normal" wake up time. So much for a relaxing Saturday morning. It was already over.

The next day, I was particularly conscious of my sleep/wake pattern. I went to bed at midnight but of course I couldn't fall asleep. I did some catching up on my National Geographic reading and finally managed to get to sleep around 2:00am. Woke up at 10:30 on Sunday.

Drifting is a strange thing for me. My very first memory of drifting happened way back in grade school. I have distinct memories of sitting in the kitchen with my mom, who was telling me it was 2:00am and I really had to go to bed. It was Christmas vacation and I'd been allowed to stay up on Christmas Eve for midnight mass - and my body just decided that was it. That was my new bedtime. Given the house we lived in, I must have been younger than 10 years old. When school started again, it was hell.

The whole phenomenon reminds me of what it must be like to be able to be flexible in your sleep schedule - like my boyfriend who happily slept until 11:30am with me, but easily woke up at 6:30am to play golf the very next day. He has a distinct preference for sleeping later hours, but it's not a problem when he can't.

Drifting is like that for me. I can manage my to work my sleep schedule away from the drift if I really, really try hard. A few days of vigilance and I can usually shift it back a couple of hours. But there's a hard stop. I call 9:00-10:00am my own normal wake time because it's the absolute earliest that I can manage to get up and function on a regular basis. It's my hard stop. Of course, if I left it to my body, I'd probably be sleeping a lot later much of the time. I imagine that other people have other hard stops - maybe noon or 2:00pm or even 5:00pm and later. I feel extremely lucky that I can work it back to 9:30ish, which is still a reasonable time to get up for work in my current situation. (But NOT in a 9-6 office commuter type job!)

The problem with drift is that yes, I do have to have some willpower and motivation to stick to a schedule, trying to fall asleep even just a bit earlier each day when my body just wants to stay up later and later. I find that Benadryl sometimes helps with this, but again there's a hard stop. Before midnight, it's useless.

Today, I've blown it already. It's 12:40 and I'm nowhere near tired enough to go to bed yet. I might try the Benadryl trick in an hour or so, but honestly? I've been so productive the last couple of hours that I really don't want to fall asleep yet. I don't have any morning obligations, so I'll probably just work for a while, catch up on some Tivo, and sleep until I wake up in the morning.

The problem with that is that I'm already stressing out about the day after that - when I have to be awake for an 11am conference call. In my "normal" world, that would be fine. But when I'm drifting, it can be tricky. Wish me luck!

5:20 AM

That's the time the New Guy wakes up on weekdays. Apparently, that's the time I'll be waking up too, at least for a few minutes.

Usually if something wakes me up before my natural time, I can get back to sleep fairly quickly. The odd thing is that I often sleep WAY past my natural wake-up time when this happens, starting the "drifting" process. My fellow DSPS'ers know what this is - waking up later pushes my natural sleep time back even later than usual, pushing my natural wake time even more off the mark. Not a good thing.

Today, I tried to counter that by setting my alarm for 9:00 when I woke up at 5:20. Between 9:00 and 10:00 is my natural time, so it wasn't far off the mark. Still, when that alarm goes off it jolts me awake and throws me off all day. It's like a mental switch doesn't quite turn on.

This leads to things like:

Walking into a room and looking around, not remembering why I'm there.

Hitting my head on the bathroom door, which opens outward into my hallway. I usually know it's there, and I pay attention, but not when I'm "off."

Putting my brush in my medicine cabinet instead of in the drawer.

Making coffee without putting the grounds in the filter, then standing there for a few minutes wondering why all I ended up with was hot water.

Dropping a whole container of blueberries all over the kitchen floor. Do you know how hard it is to get blueberries swept up off a kitchen floor that looks like THIS? Yes, those little dots are just about blueberry sized, of course.


It's not just that I'm tired when I wake up unnaturally. I'm...weird. There have been times in my life when I've been afraid to stay at other people's houses overnight because I don't want them to see how freaky I am in the mornings.

Does this happen to other people with DSPS too? Does it happen to you??? Or am I truly strange?

A New Kind of Burgermare

Well, they finally rented the studio apartment behind me. . .to a MORNING person!!!!!!!! How do I know this? Let me count the ways.

First clue is that I'm working on this blog at 9:58am on a Sunday morning. And not just any Sunday morning, but my very first Sunday morning after quitting my crack of dawn job. I was out until 2:00 celebrating last night with friends. I should be sleeping right now. Really, I should.

Unfortunately I was jolted out of sleep at an ungodly 8:20am by a loud, deep, booming voice coming right through my wall. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with the New Guy. He's not doing anything wrong. I'm sure he's speaking in a perfectly normal tone of voice, and I'm even more certain that he has absolutely no idea that he'll never have a private conversation again. I'm pretty sure the property management company left that part out of the glowing ad copy.

In any case, I think I'll probably like him. I know enough about him already. Turns out his new apartment is about the size of the master bedroom at his old place. He looked at several in the neighborhood and this was by far the best option. He really likes that the fixtures are all original - the place still has the old tile, old cabinets, old doorknob handles. He hates the parking here though and hopes getting a place without a garage wasn't a mistake. He's jealous of the rest of us, because the bigger apartments come with garages.

I know how many bottles of wine he bought for a friend's potluck. I know about his paranoid former roommate. I know who he voted for in the primary, and I know what he feels are the pros and cons of the candidates. I know a lot more that I won't post on the internet because, well, he didn't sign a consent form and neighborly gossip isn't what this is about anyway.

My point is, he had a friend over to show him the new apartment. At 8:20am. The last person who lived there was one of my best friends. She understood the "wall thing" to the point where she never let her microwave beep before noon. I love her!

But she's gone now, lost to co-habitation with a really cool guy. Happy for her, sucks for me. I'm going to have to go over at some point and have "the talk" with the New Guy. Ugh. Not pleasant, but I'm sure he deserves to know that nothing that happens in there is sacred. I'd want to know, wouldn't you?

But I definitely need some coffee first.

Thank you!!! You all ROCK!!!

Thanks to everyone who e-mailed me about participating in the study!

The response has been overwhelming and I'm doing this on the side, so it might take a while to get back to everybody. If you haven't heard from me yet, I promise that you will. I'm writing to everyone personally, so hang in there!

:-)