It’s funny—being born and raised in Houston (and with extended family in Florida), I was in my twenties before I actually set foot into a house that had a basement, and that was during a visit to the Chicago area. Anything other than house-on-slab or house-on-stilts-for-flooding is unheard of down here.
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Yes we would love the rain but the drainage sucks in most areas so that would create other problems. No, people wouldn’t be able to drive in it.
It was 34 degrees when I left for work this morning and I had frost on the roof and rear window of my car. I was irritated but the only time I’ve been in -20 was the ice cream freezer at the grocery store I worked at when I was 20. I can’t imagine just walking outside into that.
@sig and I turn 40 this month, and while he’s a morning person because of work, I’ve found it’s harder to sleep later than 6 or 7am, regardless of when I go to sleep at night. But I find it difficult to go to sleep any earlier than 11 or 11:30 most nights, because I’m decompressing from the day and I’m enjoying the silence.
Much of my early waking in the past few months is the fault of my %$#*&ing 17.5-year-old cat, who has lost all volume control and meows loudly enough to wake me at least once an hour from about 2 or 3am onward, and yells at my husband when he gets up at 5am to FEED HER RIGHT NOW DAMMIT, even if there’s food in her bowl (she’s been a free-feeder her entire life, but can’t chew kibble anymore and now has to eat canned food on a schedule).
Part of me is not going to miss her when she passes on, because that part will finally be getting a full night’s sleep for the first time in months…
My sleeping patterns are also shifting. Some of it is from being on call and having to leave the phone on. Quite a few emails tend to show up at 4 a.m. because they’re being written from our main offices which are on the east coast and they probably figure everyone will see it an hour later when they get to work. Problem is the email program we use on our phones doesn’t have a separate notificaiton setting. Same noise whether it’s an email or a text. Depending on when it happens, there may be no point in trying to get back to sleep.
The effect is that I get tired earlier in the evening, which makes me want to go to sleep earlier. But with six hours being the maximum I’m able to sleep at any given time (seven if I’m lucky), if I’m in bed at 9, I’d be up again at 3. Some of the places I support when I’m on call start their graveyard shift at 11 p.m.
Getting less fun as it goes along. At least I’m not in an apartment any more so I don’t have to worry about disturbing the neighbors if I’m moving around late at night.
I hear a rumor my sleep patterns might improve. In a couple months.
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Over the last two years I appear to have morphed from needed at least nine hours sleep to coping just fine with five and a bit. This shift also coincided with when we gave up smoking for the second time, and somehow managed to not put on weight this time. Why is my metabolism twenty years older than the rest of me? 
I am getting tired of getting tired so early. It makes it feel like I’m not getting as much time off from work because I’m just dragging in the evening and I don’t want to do anything.
I’m not a morning person, and dislike getting out of bed early. So why is my internal alarm clock waking me up early? Every. Single. Morning. Including weekends.
I’m back at the point where I’m ready for bed at 9 pm and waking up at about 4 even on nights where I’m not on call, so I lie there for two hours and hope I fall asleep again at some point. Most of the time, I do, but it’s not resulting in enough total sleep to where I can make it to 10 or 11 pm that day.
Maybe it’s looking out the window and still seeing daylight, but me no likee.
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Samesies. It’s currently 615am on a holiday and I’m up because I fell asleep at 830p last night. I have no plans and no kids and no responsibilities, but here I am wide awake! Yay.
The sun is up till 10 PM, and my daughter’s last day of school is tomorrow.
Now begins the tired time. I usually wind down after my daughter goes to bed and then go to bed about an hour after her. In the summer, it’s light till after 11 sometimes, my daughter doesn’t have to wake up at 6 AM, and she’s getting old enough to stay awake longer.
So I start going to bed later and later…
We’ll adjust and everything will be fine, but it’s annoying as hell for a while.
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I didn’t realize Indiana was that far north.
I’m guessing part of it is because they’re on the trailing edge of the eastern time zone. If I recall correctly, Alabama is Central time, but is due south of Indiana. But I could be mistaken.
That sounds right. I remember spending a few days in the Oklahoma panhandle in mid June and it would stay light until around 9:30. They are on the trailing edge of the Central time zone there.
Indiana fits basically between San Francisco and the Northern California border. On the solsitice Indianapolis gets about five hours of darkness. Astronomical twilight adds about 1.5 hours to that.Sunset is at 9:16, but it doesn’t get dark until 11:18.
My daughter’s bedtime is nominally 8:30, but effectively 9:30.
Everywhere south of us is Central.
I’m not sure what changed but I’m getting an extra hour of sleep now and sometimes it’s easier to stay up later so I’m not waking up as early. Watching TV helps, but I’d rather read if I could. No luck on that front.
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this week… I was… not… motivated to get up at the crack of dawn.
Especially that I got some kind of barsteward pig flu, and it really, really made it difficult for me. Next week should be better, I hope.
Meh.
I’ve been sleeping on the couch for the last couple of years because I find it more comfortable than the futon mattress that the Dragonlady insists on using.
I’ve been waking up at 5 or so and napping a bit until 6 when the sun really starts lighting up the room, even with the shades turned.
I’m thinking of changing my routine to get up at 6 instead of 7 and just get my whole day started earlier. I’m old now, so this is expected behavior anyway.
Me no likee this again. To be thinking at nine “maybe I should just go to bed” isn’t giving me enough of a break from work. It’s about then that I start getting productive if I want to write or dig into some other project so it’s annoying to see the night wasted. Even if I force myself to stay awake until 11 p.m. or so, I’m still waking up at about five.
I think I’d like to have just one weekend where I get about 13 hours of sleep each night like I did when I was a teenager.
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I slept wrong and pinched a nerve. My right hand and arm have been tingling off and on for a over a week now and my shoulder is wrecked.
Goes nicely with my thumb brace for my sprained thumb.