The sleep factor

"Starstuffed" wrote in message
ink.net...
I get perhaps 5 hours of sleep a day. It seems to be enough. Long ago,
when I was young, that never would have been sufficient.

At 44, I can get by comfortably for an entire day on 5 hours. Something I
couldn't do when I was 38, before I had my second to last child. Having
young ones around meant interrupted sleep on a nightly basis, which trained
me to survive on less sleep.


I go to bed around 10:00 a.m. on an average morning and it generally will
take me an hour to fall asleep. 3:30 p.m. will find me up and roaming the
house.

6:30 p.m. reveals me turning in for a two hour nap. Really though, I
probably am only asleep for an hour during this period.

On the weekends, I nap when I can, but no matter what time I go to bed, I
can't sleep more than 6 and 1/2 hours. After which I can easily follow your
pattern given the opportunity. For instance going to bed at 9PM, finds me
up at 3:30AM, which is far too early for work, so I might go back to sleep
at 5:30 and try to stay down until 8:00AM (flex start 8:00 - 9:00).

In general though I go down at 1AM and rise at 8:00, slogging my way through
the day on the standard 6 and 1/2 hours. That's why I'm not a big fan of DST
and summer observing hours.

Age, work, and amateur astronomy have all led me to functioning on less
sleep than I would really "like" to have.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Absolutely. I say things like, "I would love to get ten hours of
uninterrupted sleep for two nights in a row". But, then I look at my wife
and realize that to push the comment further would be suicidal. She gets
interrupted by the kids at night, and then has to spend the day with them.
On top of it, she suffers from mild to moderate insomnia. From her
perspective I at least get to escape to a quiet office. (Fact is, I love to
spend the day with my kids; screaming, yelling, hooting and hollering,
disciplining and loving them all the while. Too bad _she's_ not the
engineer).

-Stephen