Tag Archives: sleep

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I’m over it, cat!

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How can you get mad at this face:

Jedi Bailey

Its easy when that face decides to wake you every two hours demanding to play.

This has happened to me the last several nights in a row, and I’m officially over it. It’s ceased to be cute. Sleep is what I want… not to be begged to play.

My husband gave our cat a broken guitar string as a new toy, claiming cats love guitar strings. I am fairly sure I have him a, “Yeah… right.” look.

Well.

He was right.

This cat loves this guitar string. He runs around the house carrying it in his mouth like a dog would carry a tennis ball or stick. He will bring it to me while I sit at the desk or on the couch, set it down, and look at me like, “Make it move. Play with me!”

And I have to admit, its super cute.

What is not cute, though, is when he does this at night; when I am in a dead sleep. He jumps up on the bed, sets the string within arms reach, and proceeds to mew loudly until I wake up. The sad thing is that he has me to so well trained, that I find myself playing with him! Half asleep, moving this guitar string around so he can pounce on it. When I come to my senses, I throw it off the bed and he chases after it. Sadly, he usually comes back within two hours and we start all over.

Apparently, this isn’t an unusual phenomenon. I did a quick Google search and I discovered:

Not to mention COUNTLESS forum posts and Yahoo! Answers posts. So at least I am not alone. However,that knowledge doesn’t let me get a full night of sleep. I should probably just temporarily lock him out of my room at night, but when hubby isn’t home, I like having him around. Especially when all he does is snuggle up beside me and purr. Its an awesome comfort, and the companionship of a pet helps fill a void when you are home alone.

But, I’m over it. I’m over the late-night play sessions he demands. I might throw HIM off the bed next time!

Okay, I won’t. But it doesn’t mean I won’t be tempted…

about-me, ironic musings

Night owl

Its 4 am.

Yes, you read that right. 4 am. This is not an unusual hour for me. It’s about bed time, I suppose, and I write this from my bed. Quality time with my blog tonight, I guess you could say.

I’m a night owl. I am sure many people think this fact is due to my having married a musician who is, by profession, a night owl himself. However, I think a big part of why my husband and I ever hit it off is the simple fact that I’ve pretty much always been a night owl.

I remember back in Elementary school, I was baffled about how none of my classmates knew that at 10:30 pm, after the news, M*A*S*H came on for half an hour. Bed time was always after that show, of course, but it was perfectly normal for me to stay up to watch the show!

My classmates were all in bed by, I assumed, 8 or 9 pm. Me? I’d be up until 11 pm, mostly because there was no point to my going to bed any earlier. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway!

In high school, I was introduced to After MidNite with Blair Garner while I did homework. IF I was done with my homework, I’d still lay in bed awake until all hours listening to the radio host’s antics. If there was an artist I was really interested in being interviewed, I’d be awake until 3 am easily… waiting to hear the interview.

Now, all this being said, I’ve never been a morning person. I can remember in Elementary school, I’d get up and have cereal for breakfast. I’d build myself a fort out of cereal boxes around my bowl in an attempt to keep the light out. I already didn’t think the day should even consider starting before 10 am. At the earliest.

Somewhere along the way, I learned how to live on about 4 hours of sleep. I did that through most of college. Go to bed around 3 am. Get up by 6 or 7 am. Drive to 8 am classes. I kept this schedule up into my job at a newspaper… staying up late, though, to talk to a guy instead of to do homework.

I married that guy.

I moved to Nashville.

My night owl-ness got worse.

You can ask most of my friends here in Nashville. This fact is not unusual. It’s almost a, “Welcome to Nashville,” phenomenon.

However, its not when we go out, or if I pick up a night working downtown at the bar, that my being a night owl takes a ridiculous turn. While I’ve driven home from downtown while the sun rises, its actually when my husband goes on the road that I stay up super late. You see, sunrise offers me some sort of strange security blanket. Its like the first rays of light bring with them this sense of safety. Like I can relax and go into that vulnerable sleep-state.

I sleep as the sunrises. I wake as most go to lunch. Some days, I wake as the school bus drops off neighborhood kids. I have coffee and cereal, as they have candy bars and cokes. This is normal for me.

I try hard to adjust my schedule from time to time. I miss daylight, and I force myself up by 10 or 11 am. However, I often still stay up late after that… and I find myself sleeping even later than normal the next day to compensate! Its at times like that, that I realize that sometimes its not worth fighting the body’s natural clock. I’ll fight it when we have kids. For now, I’ll just stay a night owl.

It is what it is. And what it is now… bedtime.