Seeking the Best Night's Sleep

Early awakening still plagues my nights, which carries into my days.  The time of awakening has shifted from about 4AM to 2AM, though I can usually fall asleep again at about 4AM and go past my optimal wake time, which I set at 6:30AM.  The why still puzzles me.  I know where my routine breaks down, but with the schedule time shifted, staying fully upright through each day has not gone well either.  I tried installing a sleep monitoring app on my smart phone, going through about three before settling on one to try out.  My smart phone did a lot better than my not very smart iTOUCH  watch which claims to monitor sleep duration.  Reviewing the data from overnight added some insight, particularly the REM stages and deep sleep that I could not figure out otherwise.  It did fairly well.  What I considered wake time, that 2-4AM interval of repositioning and clock glances, it considered very light sleep.  Maybe it is.  When I eventually arise, not that long after my intended time, I do not feel overly sleep deprived, though crave some more snooze by late morning.  Coffee after cursory grooming perks me up.  Since the New Year, I have been trying to limit myself to two morning cups, but will consider an additional late morning addition.  And I am invariably able to exercise mid to late mornings.  So despite the interruption, I remain very functional.  More focus on what I do during the days that reflects on sleep, though I still do not appreciate the reason for the change in the last month or two after much success with formal sleep hygiene.  I'll just have to get more insight from the sleep monitoring app and trust its validity.

New Bag Law

Our Governor expressed his unhappiness with the litter he sees on the streets as he travels between his home and the state capital most days and attends public events around the state.  Cleaning it up, while less urgent than setting state policy for Covid damage control, has become a personal quest. He has to be diplomatic. It would not go well if he identified litter as a demarcation point that announced leaving one neighborhood and entering another or counted McDonalds wrappers along a main thoroughfare and compared the count publicly to one taken from a McDonalds parking lot in a part of his state serving a more limited, economically distressed segment of the citizens. But plastic grocery bags make an easier target.

We all have them. We all let them accumulate, either in our homes, landfills, back seat of cars, waterways, or sidewalks.  We all find them convenient when shopping. Merchants have found them economical and even useful when they carry their stores' logos.  Moreover, other states or municipalities have already restricted their use with some means of assessing outcome.  My state enacted legislation that took effect last week.  My first major shopping expedition just occurred.

Ironically, before Covid I was already using reusable grocery bags.  Then for reasons of infection control, Trader Joe's banned them and Shop-Rite disallowed their checkers from filling them. So it was back to plastic at SR and paper at TJ.  As the new law's start date approached, I found a few flimsy canvas type totes but not the ones with SR or TJ logos that better support the purpose.  My first few shopping errands did not tax my supply but then a mega purchase from SR did.

At the checkout line they sold reusable grocery bags so I purchased two. They also offer plastic bags, heavier than those that are now disallowed and reusable for 10 cents each.  The cashier seemed sensitive to the added expense for the customers.  He judged me among the sturdier customers despite my advancing years, cramming as much as he could fit into the two newly purchased reusable sacks.  It took two arms to lift each from the checkout into my cart and later from the cart into the trunk.  I still had overflow, supplied with two of the 10 cent bags that I could handle easily.

Getting them into the house took some effort.  Carrying one at a time, I lifted with both arms successfully, not having to drag either along the asphalt driveway, concrete walk, or tiled entryway. Presumably the cashiers have been trained to not overload frail appearing customers or at least move the heavy stuff into the carts and escort them to their cars to assist with transfer to their trunks.  At home they are on their own, but like have leftover old plastic bags not yet recycled to take out to the cars and transfer from the overloaded reusable totes.

Morning Routine

 

While working on a presentation on retirement, I discovered stages known to others who studied them but not to me. There is an initial Time Affluence.  It can become idle, and early on often is, but eventually gets replaced by routines.  These tend to do better if self-directed rather than spontaneous, but either way they form with a life of their own.  Having passed the two year mark, the demarcation point that the studies suggest, my own routines have settled at the beginning of each day, less so at the end, and can remain flexible for the many hours in-between.

Wanting to feel rested amid often disrupted sleep, I set myself on a Sleep Hygiene program that worked well until recent weeks when early awakening has reappeared. The core of any Sleep Hygiene program is a fixed get up time, which I set as 6:30 and adhered to within a half hour, though I am rethinking this as the rest of the day is often better if I postpone this until I am more rested. Partial grooming comes next, the electric toothbrush with manual on shabbos, flossing with a Placker, moisturizing my forehead.  On Monday mornings I also weigh myself.  Once upright, I try to stay upright, usually but not always successfully.  To the kitchen next for coffee and washing a rack of last night's dishes.  I will often take out recycling and retrieve the newspaper to the front door for my wife. Coffee then gets transported to My Space where I look at email, Twitter, and FB, usually in that order, except for the days divisible by 4 which gives me a hiatus from social media.  The tasks outlined the day before get reviewed, with a rough ranking of importance, or at least commitment to doing the ones I really intend to complete. 

Now ready to go.  More often than not, furrydoc.blogspot.com entry comes next. Or right after that second cup of coffee.

A Break for the News

As attachment to the world becomes ever more accessible, I have found myself rather uninterested in tapping into it, at least not diverting from what else I am doing instead.  It's not that I am uninformed.  Misinformed, perhaps, some would insist likely.  But snippets come my way passively, often from what FB friends or the Post-Dispatch display on FB or from the hourly news on the radio, either in the car or in my kitchen where it serves as background noise. As a college student I took to KYW-1060 all news all the time, largely as a novelty but also because that station offered the best clarity on my AM transistor radio.  As a commuter, I needed the traffic report so KYW became the center push button of my car radio, as it still is.  

More recently, as I retire and retreat daily to My Space for much of the day, actively seeking out events has become a low priority.  It's not as if I reject information.  Indeed, I pay for subscriptions to The Forward and to The Atlantic which offer mostly good analysis of events, or at least The Atlantic does. The Forward presents a Jewish slant on events or culture.  They have reader comments, no better or worse than any other public site, rarely read, though often contributed to. You could argue that my FB friends make comments on news items they post, though they reflect reaction more than analytical thought.  There is something to be said for having an editor take responsibility for what others can read.

What I have not done until this week has been to divert from what I was doing, typically writing, exploring subjects on You Tube, bantering with electronic friends, watching my favorite channels, or reading to access a dedicated news source.  I hadn't originally planned to this week either until I opened The Forward to see that, to my surprise, a Democrat had won one of the two runoff seats in Georgia and that the other was still in contention.  Close The Forward and transfer to cnn.com. Now we have not only engaging news but to me unexpected favorable news, particularly when the second Democrat held a lead that would give my preferred party control of both houses of Congress, something they botched in November when it appeared more likely.  I had to follow the returns.  

On the same day, the formal certification of electoral votes would take place.  No surprise on the outcome of the count and vote, irritation with the circus that would perform.  Protesters are a necessary part of the American fabric, also expected.  Like everyone else, I did not expect a siege of the Capitol Building.  Once it occurred, and the second Georgia election seemed more likely to convert the Senate majority, the analysis from the news sources started pouring in.  I had allotted the day to work on an upcoming presentation, now pre-empted by news and commentary.  I shuttled between a number of news organizations on my screen but did not access TV or radio at all.  Like many others, I thought formally removing the President from power by the 25th Amendment might be the best option though others favored impeachment or running out the calendar.  All defensible but with different consequences.  Will his repetitively toxic and now physically toxic rhetoric be diffused?  That's the next story I had to have, still diverting me from other tasks like working on that talk or getting papers cleared out of the living room.  But I stayed fixated on events as they played out.

They are still playing out a few days later but I am returning to My Space less engrossed in the various moments of news cycle.  I have been reading The Atlantic more, as the commentaries are all well-considered, The Forward less as the commentaries are more pedestrian, cnn.com hardly at all.  And I am making good progress with my Power Point slides for the upcoming presentation.

 

Less Interested

On the dates divisible by 4 I shun Facebook and Twitter.  It took some willpower at first but lately it hasn't. That day being yesterday, I opened neither, had no Fear of Missing Out, acronymed FOMO. There was a time when I sort of did, but not lately.  The permissibility of social media returned to me at 5:30AM this morning but being tired, I had no inclination to see what I missed until more awake.  Then I did, only to discover that I missed nothing.  Two groups had responded to trivial comments on mine, one about the Eagles where I hinted that their coach needed to repent for some misconduct, the other about a site near my childhood home where my father had been sent for basic training when drafted into World War 2.  No reactions from anyone I actually knew about anything I had written, whether written about myself or in response to something somebody else has written.

As I go about the posts of the 24 hours that I avoided, they were mostly political posts pitching the hardball to excoriate the President, who I think deserves the demeaning remarks, or defending the blight that challenges our election.  By now I've gotten the hang of each position.  One very good friend has a daily presentation of science which I should read, though gradually evolving from the purity of analysis to the justification of his position on the public discourse of the day. That I regularly read, and often submit my own comment.

What has happened to Facebook seems a form of attrition.  I've been a participant about ten years, according to their records, as I do not keep my own records on this.  It was great to connect to high school chums, a few friends at the time, more acquaintances who became electronic friends.  Gradually their individual presence has waned. Most used to write about events of their lives, from vacations to challenges at work, their pets, or what they knitted or cooked.  They engaged in basically written conversation about themselves.  That's a lot different than the written placards which dominate now.

As the forum changes, so does my interest.  Sometimes as I read, or really glance at, what some repetitively post, I find myself in an unwelcome position of thinking less of the poster, their disdain for thought trampling my memories of them as engaging contemporaries who I once knew personally.  As this become more the norm, displacing the electronic banter that made Facebook attractive, I can understand the gradual attrition of my acquaintances from the forum, along with my own waning interest in engaging with what remains.

At the Edge

Retirement has afforded me more flexibility in donating platelets.  While working, I typically appeared at the Blood Bank quarterly on a Saturday morning.  Now I can come anytime, though I won't accept an afternoon appointment.  And in deference to those still limited to weekends, I opt for a traditional workday for my donation.  Four a year has increased to about ten, or at least that has been my intent.  While the occupational threats to eligibility, usually blood or needle exposure, a new one has emerged, my optimal health.  Once I have been disqualified based on Hb < 13 g/dl on their tabletop hemocytometer.  More typically I come out right at the cutoff.  Since protocol takes the higher of two measurements, I squeak by more often than not. At my most recent donation, test 1 =12,9, test 2 =13.1.  Had it been the reverse, there would only have been one measurement.  It has varied by as much as 0.4 but nobody can tell me the reliability of their desktop instrument. I have been able to predict by how big a drop of blood the technician obtains, so I think a very thin smear wicked into the collector registers low. There is at least one article suggesting that the wicking method overestimates the value obtained on a lab analyzer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5754049/  In any case, the arbitrary cutoff seems less than medically rigorous if a person can qualify with discrepant results within the sensitivity of the machine.

I asked about temperature.  Temperature is taken by a cutaneous forehead device before they even let a person sign in, a very crude screening but quick and easy to avoid obvious covid concerns.  The formal temperature is sublingual with what I presume is a thermocouple, which would be very accurate.  It surprised me that anyone would show up with a fever until they advised me that their cutoff was 99.6F = 37.6C which is less than medical significance and could easily escape self-detection.

I do not know if there are bp or p cutoffs.  

While it's critical that blood donation be safe for donor and recipient, I wonder to what extent the chronic difficulty recruiting donors reflects some of their own stringencies, some of which seem questionable.  Binary standards, either you're in  or you're out, make screening more automated but at the expense of the blood supply perhaps.  Some things have enhanced eligibility.  Improvements in screening for certain infections have reduced exclusion times from one year to three months for many conditions.  NSAIDS other than Feldene are now permitted for platelet donors.  Yet they really have to err on the side of safety, even when eligibility can shift in literally one minute for the same donor.

Plastic Bag Ban

My state pretty much eliminated those ubiquitous plastic grocery bags effective a few days ago.  I made my first shopping venture under the new law today, just to replace kcups.

While the law is new, my commitment to reusable grocery bags is not.  Pre-covid I used them most of the time, largely as a personal aligning with the long term best interest of our planet.  I had purchased one from Trader Joe's, two with a Shop-Rite logo.  In addition, multiple organizations have provided flimsy burlap textured sacks as promotional items.  On each supermarket foray, I would put a few into each other, then into my basket.  Covid changed this.  Trader Joe's stopped accepting them.  Shop-Rite would not let their cashiers bag them and the self-service checkouts either limited to 25 items or for the larger quantity self-lanes did not offer plastic bags when my own supply of home packaging was inadequate.  Between the grocery unfriendliness to my good intention, I just stopped taking them with me.  Now that I need them again, I cannot find the ones I bought at the supermarket.  There were a few faux canvas containers in my kitchen so I took a few with me, though I could have just carried the coffee with the receipt.  A box of 60kcups fit perfectly into one of the bags.  Now I need to search kitchen and car for the rest.