Yes, you could call me "early to bed". If you take it back thirty something years, I am told I did not sleep well. I can remember as a young girl begging my parents to "sit with me" until I fell asleep...and the
I can't recall any sleep problems throughout my childhood or teenage years, and I pulled as many late nights and all-nights as the rest of my friends.
Until my first year of university, when I was hit by mono and spent months living in a fog of exhaustion which no amount of shut-eye could cure. Thus began my paranoia about getting enough sleep. You have no idea how absolutely annoyed I was when the bars in Ontario started staying open until 2 a.m. instead of 1. That just meant everyone arrived an hour later than they used to...and the fun started happening when I was ready to nod off!
I also worked weekends and summers and had to be up just as early those days as when I was in school...and I could never understand how people could function without at least six (preferably eight) hours of sleep. I had fun, but maybe not enough, because very few experiences were worth being up all night. (I said there were few, not none!)
And then I had babies. Though I've had three and a half years of sleeping-through-the-night bliss (except for Maggie's occasional request for a midnight tuck-in) but I haven't lost that survival instinct of sleep-when-the-sleeping's-good. Hey, if I could guarantee that I could sleep through 'til 8 a.m. on the weekends, a midnight bedtime would suit me fine. But try explaining this new rule to the kids.
Since I have had to suffer so much ridicule for being a snoozophile, I feel more more than a little validated by Boesveld's article. For example:
Can you really tell me that you don't want to lose weight, slow aging and have glowing skin and more energy? Avoid diabetes and heart disease and boost your immunity? How about an edge at work? And of course, wealth, fame and a better love life. Okay, I made up that last sentence, but who knows?
I will no longer be ashamed when I am the first to leave book club, when I turn down late movie dates, and unplug my phones on random nights at 8 p.m. just so I know I won't be awoken.
And honestly, if you aren't getting eight hours a night, you truly don't know what you're missing. Although a coworker recently said the same thing to me about eating vegetables, so I guess to each her own.
