Asleep Atop Bedspread

I never tucked myself in.  When my internal clock awoke me at about 2AM, as it usually does, I had no recollection of the hours that preceded it.  Likely four hours, from my habitual nightly activity.  And I had changed into nightclothes.  I remember putting a hard-cover book checked out of the public library earlier that day onto the floor beside the bed.  Nothing else.

I fall asleep readily most nights, sometimes after using my smartphone when I shouldn't, sometimes after reading, though most commonly taking a supine position with dangling elements of the cumulative day's thoughts for a short time.  Sleep tracker use invariably puts my sleep onset time at about fifteen minutes from the time I turned on the app, placing the phone to my right.  I do not remember using the phone, although on my second nightly wakening I found it next to me with its light off.

At 2AM, awakened for no obvious purpose though always a convenient bladder emptying opportunity, I strolled to the bathroom and back.  I likely turned the bathroom light on and off, as it was off when I returned at my usual 7AM wake time.  When I returned, I realized that I had not removed the upper pillow with its sham that matched the bedspread.  I dislike that pillow.  It leaves my head too high.  Before tucking myself under the down comforter, I invariably place it next to the bed, where I had placed the library book.  And the cell phone either goes in the charger, where it should have gone based on its battery level, or on a ledge behind my bed.  It remained atop the bedspread, as did I.

My next awareness came after 5 AM, as it often does, with a target arise time of 7AM.  Now for the first time I realized that I fallen asleep atop the bedspread with cell phone at my side.  Sensing no need to get under the blanket, and with my preferred pillow securely beneath my head, I relocated the phone to its customary place on the wooden landing behind me.  Then a final snooze with some clock watching resuming at 6:30AM.  I arose at my appointed daily hour, not feeling dragged for having missed my blanket the entire night.

Caught Up With Me

Good habits to create, then nurture.  For me, getting up when I tell myself I should irrespective of how I feel, then going on the treadmill for the pre-determined session before my first activity.  I've done well since New Year's.  Up at 7AM with few exceptions such as illness following my Covid vaccine, which traded one healthy effort for another.  Then treadmill.  Lapse for an illness like cytokine surge from the covid vaccine or an injury to a part of my lower extremity.  But lapses are few.  To do this successfully, I set a fixed time:  8:15AM, enough time for two 8 oz cups of coffee made in a Keurig K-Express and to review my plan of attack that keeps the rest of the day productive plus at least one crossword puzzle.  And maybe a blog entry, and certainly check overnight messages.

Resumption of OLLI classes interfered with what had been going so well.  To get to my 9AM classes, treadmill sessions were shifted to 7:35AM.  One cup of coffee, retrieve newspaper for my wife, attention to my indoor plants on scheduled days, then about a half hour to get dressed, prepare lunch on Thursdays, review my day if outlined the night before, make an insulated mug of coffee before heading to the driveway at 8:25AM, which would give me enough time to sip from the mug and greet an old friend or two in the auditorium, then settling down for my morning class.

It has a beneficial purpose, but a few weeks into the adapted schedule, I feel its effects.  Legs sore, slightly tired, not always able to squeeze a breakfast together before leaving the house, something I had been doing as an initiative with reasonable success while still on OLLI intercession.  I do not feel particularly tired before my computer or desk clock reaches treadmill time.  And I don't struggle with the session.  But I also have not noticed the traditional benefits of regular exercise at appropriate capacity.  My ability to increase the treadmill rate and duration has not happened.  My muscles sometimes ache.  Knees feel like they have been stressed.  Stretching, which I schedule twice a week, has found my capacity deteriorating.

I sleep better.  I've been perhaps a tad more energetic in the late morning, though hurting by midday.  And being among people, even interacting with a mixture of strangers and friends, has improved my lingering feeling of loneliness.  So I'm not feeling badly with the new schedule, just with some musculoskeletal sequelae of my effort.  

Vacation, with its respite from the schedule, is not for another four weeks, though close enough to anticipate a need for some new scenery and new people.  And at the end of each month I afford myself three consecutive days off the treadmill for my legs to recover.  It has been gratifying to display what some might call grit, doing what I set out to do despite its discomfort.  Though the health benefits and social benefits come at the neglect of some of my mental activity, as my commitment to the things I create has fallen behind.  Now that sleep and exercise are reasonably committed and executed, I can make a similar commitment to perhaps some fixed writing and expression times.

Morning Routine

Everyone's day has to start somewhere.  Clocks were reset a few days ago to keep the onset of daylight in the vicinity of most people's alarm clock settings at the expense of early evening darkness.  People are used to remaining active for at least a few hours after nightfall though less internally programmed to arise before dawn.  And as visitors to airports figure out, it is always Happy Hour somewhere on earth, keeping their pubs occupied irrespective of local time.

My day does not really start with an alarm clock as much as an inner sense that I ought to get up.  I have made attempts at fixed wake and sleep times, deferring to the Sleep Hygiene guidance of experts but my internal programming never quite resets as the gurus predict it would.  So I make a commitment to myself each morning to limit my dawn awake time in bed to a clock setting, 7-ish most mornings, and rarely betray that personal commitment.  

Productivity experts, and I'm a sucker for experts, looking mostly in reverse at people who they identify as successful, then teasing out what they find in common about them, largely conclude that people who achieve notable things most days in their daily box of daylight have some predictability to how they start.  Follow them and you will become like them is probably a fallacy, but the findings seem to give an advantage to those who begin each day with some predictable activities.  So my day begins with the electric toothbrush and a floss placker. On Mondays I step on the scale.  Then downstairs to my Keurig -Express, selecting a porcelain cup from my collection and a pod from a rotating rack that usually holds four choices.  Brew 8 oz.  While the water makes its way from the reservoir to heating element, through the grounds, into the cup, I wash a few dishes left over from the night before.  I check the progress of plants in the Aerogarden and chia pots that sit in the living room.  On Mondays I take the yellow tape measure that dangles near my downstairs desk to record my waist circumference, then head outdoors in nightclothes irrespective of weather to transport the daily newspaper from the end of the driveway to the front door where my wife can take it inside for reading, which is essential to her morning routine.  And if the recycling box needs to be emptied into the biweekly recycling bin, I do that at the same outing.

Coffee in hand, it's upstairs to my desk in My Space.  Since my day was outlined the night before, another common habit of successful people, I review it.  Take the morning pills from the daily pill case set out every Sunday, wash down with coffee.  There are opinions to wash amlodipine with a different liquid but my serial BP's have been therapeutic with the way I do it now.  Laptop on.  Messages next:  email, FB, Twitter, Reddit has been my usual sequence.  Then on Monday and Tuesday do The Atlantic Crossword, the only days within my capacity.  Next a blog entry.  Sometimes I can do this in one sitting, sometimes not.  But I always select a theme for the entry and usually begin before moving on to the Washington Post crossword puzzle.  At 8:15AM on dates not divisible by three, I return downstairs for a treadmill session, the duration and speed determined before I start.  Knee and ankle braces to the right joints, running shoes that I keep next to the lounge chair, then exercise with a countdown clock.  It feels good to complete it each time.  Remove shoes and braces.  Usually more coffee, then back upstairs to crosswords or blog or maybe delay slightly to do more dishes.  

That's about two hours.  I've still not gotten dressed, still not had anything seriously caloric.  But several days a week, I need to depart the house for an OLLI class or shabbos services so I close the Morning Routine box, get dressed, and start the parts of my Daily Task Lists that make most days unique in their own way.

Past the Alarm

Some divided research conclusions have explored how well, or even whether, we can change our sleep patterns.  Fundamentally people are programmed to be diurnal, get up in daylight, retire for the night when it's dark.  Many religions, mine among them, time what we are expected to do when by these cycles of day and night.

In our modern world we have rush hours morning and evening when people accommodate their working times.  Marketers know when prime time is to maximize media advertising revenue.  And for a lot of us who struggle to be asleep when we think we should, a variety of chemical time readjustments are available for purchase.

But we still have people who work the dark hours, sometimes as rotating shifts, sometimes as their careers.  And we take care of our little ones whose internal clocks have not yet been settled.  We party to the wee hours sometimes.  And whatever time it is in my house, it is shifted by 12 hours someplace else.

I have the good fortune to have been primarily a day worker with some periodic after dark responsibilities.  Now I am past that, retired, with few external impositions of what I must do when.  That makes my wake times something of a box of hours to be filled with activities largely of my choosing.  I want to be productive, but I also don't want to be dragging myself to my next undertaking that I might find more enjoyable if fully alert and energetic.

I thought I would expand that box of wakefulness by forty minutes, twenty at the start of the day and twenty at the end of the day.  My sleep would be the same, I thought, as I don't actually sleep during all the dark hours allotted for it.  What I wanted was two more twenty minute sessions of work time.  I could do some very useful, or at least pleasant things in twenty minutes.  And I have resources to assist me, unlike hour hunter-gatherer ancestors our Rabbis who depend on looking at the sky.  My cell phone has a sleep tracker app installed, which includes a wake-up time.  My smartwatch can buzz my wrist at a time coordinated with its cell phone app.  Just set the alarm and get up when it nudges me.

The end of the day is a little harder to regulate.  I can use the clock to decide whether I am in bed or out.  Coordinating rigid lights out time with my wife whose biological clock is shifted later than mine has less consistency.  And when watching TV, my own internal clock often goes on snooze.  So while I can get that twenty minutes of bed is off-limits time, I cannot necessarily make it productive.

So work with what I can, the morning.  Set the smartwatch for the desired time.  Got up at the buzz for a while.  Then middle of the night insomnia returned, wakefulness when I didn't want to be awake.  The buzz started coming right as I returned to effective sleep.  That left a dilemma, force myself to arise at the signal or follow my internal signal to not interrupt those deeper stages of sleep that are often elusive.  So far, I've compromised.  Sleep through the wrist alarm but listen to the radio behind the bed.  Arise after the emcee plays the daily march.  That leaves me reasonably awake.  It also leaves me without those extra twenty minutes of focus each morning, which was the purpose of resetting the sleep times.  And I really want those twenty minutes at each end of my day.

Comfy

Supreme comfort did not set in until almost time for the Sleep Tracker to turn on its daily wake-up music.  I had gotten up with my once nightly nocturia a little early, 2:45AM.  Two hours later I was awake, though still horizontal.  Timed efforts to return to sleep, 30 minutes of left lateral decubitus, 20 minutes of supine, neither session recognizing the subtle wrist buzz at session's end.  Eventually I succeeded in returning to sleep, though I don't really know what time.  But with less than an hour to anticipated wake time as I glanced at the white numerals on my smart watch, I found myself unusually content, fully wrapped in my down comforter, back of my head in the middle of my poly-fiber pillow, feeling just the right amount of warmth.  I knew the music from the Sleep Tracker app would conflict with my enjoying these moments of creature comfort.  For the first time, I selected snooze, then hyped myself to dental hygiene and the day's start when the music returned.

The tracker monitors phases of sleep over the night.  Deep, less than usual, Awake, more than usual, about two hours by the app's algorithm.  REM and light sleep typical of other nights.  I do not feel optimally rested, but reasonably functional to do a few special projects today.  But now I know that maximum overnight bliss requires redistributing the down in the comforter with a few shakes, then head on pillow while down traps my heat while I stay sandwiched between the mattress and blanket.  I do not know how many hours that can be maintained.

Two Half-Nights

It doesn't take very long to adapt to Daylight Savings Time, now in its second day.  Much like traveling to a different time zone.  Sleep times are affected first, though not for many nights.

My Sleep Tracker has helped improve my rest, for all its inaccuracies.  Some things it just doesn't seem designed to do, particularly measuring my middle of the night insomnia, those wakeful times, and it doesn't always measure sleep latency, or time from entering bed to falling asleep in the best way either.

Trying to adapt to DST, I followed the clock, which had not yet become my biological reset, entering bed at the desired time, probably falling asleep in a reasonable time, though not the seven minutes on the tracker.  I awoke five hours later, fully awake, engaging in some timed maneuvers with my smartwatch to return to real sleep.  I must have about an hour later, then awakening spontaneously, though not entirely refreshed at a reasonably desirable clock time, which by then was probably also my biological time.  I thought I would stay in semi-sleep until the tracker which has an algorithm for sounding within a band of preset time, signaled me to get up.  WRTI radio set by my wife got there first.  My first inclination, wait another fifteen minutes for their Souzalarm, which is a rousing march of some type aired at 7:15, which is also the end point of my tracker algorithm, but I just told the tracker to end the night's recording, look at its overnight statistics, and go on to dental hygiene followed by weekly weigh-in and coffee.

While the tracker offered its measurements, my internal assessment is that I really had two half-nights of sleep, each pretty decent.  First portion, falling asleep to awakening five hours later, second portion resuming true sleep probably an hour or so later and waking spontaneously close to a customary wake time.  Each seemed adequate when combined, neither adequate by itself.  And I don't really have a good sense of what transpired in each session except for maybe a fragment of a dream in the second half.

The purpose of sleep is to enable the next day.  Off to an OK start.

Melatonin Assisted

Up slightly earlier.  Feeling more refreshed at day's start than I had been.  Don't know how much to attribute to a therapeutic trial of an OTC melatonin chewable at bedtime.  Since darkness had already appeared, my endogenous melatonin should have been synthesized and released.  Maybe it was.  After chewing the tablet, which invariably brings me to nap time on those Saturday afternoons when I've taken one, not a whole lot happened.  Falling asleep has never been difficult.  Staying asleep has.  Typically, my first middle of the night awakening will draw my eyes to a clock radio whose red numerals portray a time of about 3AM.  If that happened last night, I don't remember it.  Instead, I remember 6AM, using the bathroom, though not feeling groggy.  Next glimpse, 6:36AM.  Felt reasonably rested, so on to dental hygiene routine followed by coffee.  I'm definitely less than expected tiredness at first arising.  From the melatonin tablet?  Not what I expected but worth doing again.

Reluctantly Up

Today has a few must dos, particularly as shabbos enters tonight.  Not a lot, though.  Should refill gas tank.  Low on bread.  Should take out anything else trash haulers can remove when they come around, though nothing will happen if it waits for next week's pickup.  Not planning to go anywhere for shabbos, including services.  A do nothing day never really goes well.  Consecutive do nothing days never prove restorative either.  

There are items on my Daily Task List, though I've not marked the ones also on Semi-annual projects with a colored highlighter yet.  

I'm not physically impaired.  A little achy.  A little down, maybe lonely.  Skipping services entirely may not be the best choice, though I really get little pleasure from being there.  Perhaps if I accomplish something important or special today, my mood will get a small boost.  But at least I am now up, with coffee splashed with on sale Oat Milk for the first time, starting a little over an hour late.  And it's not a treadmill day.  As much of a chore as I find exercising, it is also a source of accomplishment.  So is making shabbos dinner, so the by day's end I should have something to show for having made myself vertical.

Sleeping Elsewhere

With my wife isolated for confirmed covid, myself minimally symptomatic but with negative testing, and probably too impulsive in cancelling my upcoming long awaited endoscopic studies, I need a mixture of respite and reset.  First a different place to sleep for a few nights, then later maybe a different GI group.  It two nights I've had three different sleep locations, none really comparable to my own bed.  The recliner in My Space, long past its prime, has been a place where I can force the back to about 45 degrees or so, then rest.  Many times I have dozed off there while watching the Big Screen, never really awakening fully rested, often unable to return to full sleep in my own bed, but at least I can fall asleep there.  My daughter's room has a high quality single bed, probably my best default when my wife and I need to sleep separately.  We got it for her right before her brother was born, so the mattress and box spring are probably about 36 years old, still like new.  She slept in it nightly until college, with breaks for camp, seemingly well rested.  I find the mattress too hard, something Goldilocks would not only understand but take action to find something softer.  Still, I fell asleep with a sleep pattern of early awakening not different from my own bed, though perhaps not as well rested.  Last night I tried the new sofa, one we've had for only a few months.  It seemed about the right hardness.  It's seating width, at about 22 inches, was too narrow for optimal comfort, but the hardness of the surface, while more than my mattress, was adequate.  The pillows that came with this sofa were intrusive.  We had excellent throw pillows which I could use for my head.  The back pillows were not removable to expand width.  Most of last night there, finished on my daughter's mattress.  I got up a half hour early, not wanting to languish there.

This being Thanksgiving, had dinner not been cancelled due to household covid, I would have a full day in the kitchen, one of my more satisfying personal pursuits. I'm not terribly sleep-deprived, but less well rested than I need to be for a marathon effort of a multicourse dinner.  I have other things to do instead, many of them at my keyboard and screen.  I feel rested enough to tackle these,

though even with coffee, I will need to put myself horizontal somewhere for a few hours while it is still daylight.

Got Up Reluctantly

Big day of errands and doing stuff I really don't want to do tomorrow.  Tackle the procrastination list.  But today, perhaps, revel in that procrastination.  Or not.  I considered not getting up.  iTouch Slim buzz got a mental Not Now.  More than an hour later, still not motivated, my rational self took over.  I still need to take my medicines, tend to my injured joints, step on the scale for its weekly measurement, and see what the yellow tape measure declares about my waist circumference.  Coffee would help as an eye-opener.  There is still a newspaper to move from driveway to front door.  And at least some of my semi-annual projects could nudge ahead in some way.  So reluctantly I'm up, though at the expense of Sleep Hygiene which does better when I respect the assigned time for getting up.   Ice pack on knee.  Anti-hypertensives swallowed.  Newspaper moved.  Weight/Waist measurements recorded. E-mail that could have waited reviewed.  Week's easy The Atlantic Crossword completed in 1 minute 42 seconds.  Coffee having its first effects.

Extra AM Snooze

I follow classic health rules with better compliance now that I've retired.  Exercise on schedule in a programmed amount, avoid unrestrained eating, sleep on schedule, take my scheduled medicines.  All has gone well with setbacks resulting in feeling pretty good as a senior citizen.  Lapses occur, most of them rationalized in some way, but not many.  Physical health good, emotional health less good, with loneliness at times and languishing at others, with a few uplifts thrown in.  I've done better with physical advice than the mental hygiene advice of immersing myself among others.

Unusual event this morning, though.  My iTouch watch buzzed me awake.  Felt OK.  Dental care done.  This being Pesach, I do not bring coffee into My Space like I usually do early in the morning.  Not having another good reason to go downstairs, I plopped myself into the recliner that serves as the My Space centerpiece.  Within minutes I nodded off for another two hours.  Then downstairs for coffee.  My morning got time shifted a bit.  Fortunately it's a scheduled day off from the treadmill.  When sleep physiology functions that way, it's probably some correction of my own misunderstandings.

Try the Recliner

A melatonin misadventure.  After several Shabbos afternoons of chemically prodded escape, half snooze, half stupor from chewing a 1.5 mg melatonin tablet, I thought I might try taking it the way it was intended for sleep.  So at twilight, I gave myself a head start with the tablet, got a little drowsy but not sleepy, and entered bed at the usual time.  I read a bit.  However, I did not fall asleep, which I likely would have from doing nothing but following the buzz on my iTouch watch.  

After no progress in a reasonable time, I headed to my trusty lounge chair in My Space, setting the TV to a pretty good show about bears.  Watched a while, dozed off for I don't know how long but eventually awoke to the modern version of Test Patterns that Netflix displays when the show has concluded without any remote commands for something else.  Back to bed.  Not for very long.  Back to recliner and an attempt to resume the show on bears where I think I nodded out.  Again to the end, clearly drowsy.  Bed got another go, a partially restful one but not for that long.  Back to the chair where the appointed time the wrist buzzer alerted me.  Not ready to get up, despite my commitment to following the dictates of that signal.  Arising only delayed about twenty minutes, then on to morning routine, not feeling particularly sleep-deprived but not in hot anticipation of the day's opportunities either.  Coffee as the next guiding chemical.

Up Late

Football conference championships caught my attention, the right respite from some snow removal soreness.  I root for the Chiefs out of loyalty to Iggles icon Andy Reid.  His team blew it, their premier quarterback losing his poise as the opposing team accumulated points  The other game had two California teams.  Since my daughter lives in the Bay Area and the LA Rams have pretty much abandoned my once town of St. Louis, I leaned toward the Niners who also came up short, outplayed in the second half.

Time Zones being what they are and the game being undecided until after the two minute warning, my customary bedtime got postponed, not helped at all by some intrusive thought, bothersome enough to delay my entry into the sleep cycles but not bothersome enough to remember the next day.  For the first time in a long time, I greeted the 6:30 wrist alarm with a Later, which turned out to be 70 minutes later.

Adapted to being awake.  Fleishig dishes done.  Minimize social media today.  First cup coffee within reach on its coaster in My Space.  Just a time shift for the day.

Sleep Tracker

Second use in a row that my android sleep monitoring device failed.  I have one with my iTouch watch, highly inaccurate, not that my Prime Nap app is a whole lot better.  It does log the sleep and wake times at each end correctly but my failure to stay asleep as I transition from one sleep cycle to the next it often misses.  Its algorithm uses surrogates of sleep such as lack of motor activity suggesting REM but has no way of identifying the CNS wave types that better define the stages.  So even when Prime Nap records, it has little correlation with my own assessment of how the night went.  I think it went OK last night, delayed onset of sleep but restful once there.

Dark and Cold

Only two weeks since setting the clocks back an hour. It's still dark when I make my first cup of coffee and retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway.  Most mornings there's a poor soul walking the dog amid the dawn chill.  They have playtime later but some probably have second thoughts about their obligations to their Best Friend.  My own short stroll outdoors remains brief, too brief to justify adding to my night clothing.  With poor light, I've not been dumping the recycling en route to the newspaper, as it is not always obvious which is the bin with the green lid.

Which deters me more, the dark or the cold?  Probably the dark. It should be chilly this season.  That's what keeps my geographic setting invigorating.  I should not need supplemental illumination at my usual waking time ever.  That is how our brains and sleep patterns evolved.  The cycles of nature include sunrise, sunset, and seasons.  Definition of when we should be up and about based on a clock that drives a consistent wake time sometimes runs contrary to the mechanisms that we have to best cope with the world.

I expect it to get darker and colder as we move from fall into winter.  I could change my wake time, as my personal schedule in retirement has few external contingencies, but responding to that 6:30AM buzz on my left wrist irrespective of how I feel that morning has helped enormously in framing the day that follows it.  I could delay retrieving the paper until dawn has progressed sufficiently to let me put the recycling in the proper receptacle at the same time.  As Thanksgiving approaches, I could express appreciation for my schedule that part of each year allows me to partake of the transition from night to day.

Soon the temperature will fall below freezing.  Outdoor containers may need to spend their nights indoors.  The strolling dogs and their owners may be in more of a hurry to get the business done quickly, with exercise and playtime expanded indoors.  The newspaper will still arrive each morning, with its obligatory retrieval while the first k-cup brews.  And it will be even darker and colder.

Arising Too Early

Challenging day yesterday, both physical impediments and some emotional strain with my synagogue as it reopens and perks along without me.  Do I want to return as they reopen?  Not yet.  Do I want to defect  someplace else?  Probably not, though not entirely off the table.  It's been an unfavorable experience of a few years in duration, the extent unmasked perhaps by the forced separation of Covid.  So dizziness, dyspnea, and rumination all converge with the hope that REM will sort them out.  It hasn't.

My two sleep trackers interpret two very different nights for me, but the iTouch wristwatch sleep monitor seems almost fiction while the smart phone app matches my own assessment pretty closely, though it really cannot identify REM.  Rare difficulty falling asleep, which I attribute to some rehashing displeasure with the shul.  Once asleep, the pattern remained of waking at about two sleep cycles, dozing off for another two.  I woke partially refreshed about an hour before my wrist alarm setting.  I got up, did dental care, did weekly weight measurement, went to kitchen and made coffee.

Ordinarily, I make an effort to stay in bed until the wrist vibration so that there would be a clear demarcation between sleep time and activity time, but this morning I just proceeded ahead.  FB Roulette landed at 36, an even day without FB which makes me optimistic about what might be accomplished providing I tolerate my time on the treadmill this morning a lot better than I tolerated my venture to the garden yesterday afternoon.  And the synagogue really needs to be set aside until its annual meeting in two days when I can decide whether to impose some abrasive candor. 

Improved Disposition

After dragging a bit, the past few days I've felt inexplicably well.  My daily pattern seems more stable from the awakening of the wrist alarm to a reasonably predictable treadmill time, to that glass of sherry in late afternoon, pills at 7PM, some TV, and finally bedtime with it's ongoing overnight awakening.  I don't feel nearly as tired.  Nor do I feel driven to do specific tasks but I still get more than average done.  What I would think of as recreation, fishing, drawing, day trips and the like haven't happened but I don't miss them.  Social media has come under the control of a daily spin of Virtual Roulette, settling into the statistical average of about half the time allowed.  Yet even when I am ON, I have much less emotional attachment to FB and don't sign into Twitter at all.  I don't feel either driven, nor do I feel guilty for activity shortfalls, yet I've been productive in a gratifying way.  Nuisance aches have not progressed beyond nuisance.  Completion of a set time and intensity on the treadmill takes effort but offers satisfaction at the conclusion, as well as perhaps some well-being that reflects the regularity of age-appropriate exercise extended over more than a year.

My mood has improved, likely attributable to resuming a citalopram tablet each evening.  I'm less frazzled though still remain resolute when I should be.  And perhaps I'm friendlier and more personable, almost like Peter Kramer's description of treated patients in his Listening to Prozac, now thirty years after publication.  

As I focus more on what I might prioritize for the second half of this calendar year, I have no recollection of past moods during planning months and how they might have affected choices.  This time I seem to be pretty mellow.

Plain Stiff

Up in the middle of the night.  Not just failure to move between consecutive sleep cycles but with a notable measure of discomfort.  Putting on my best checklist of sensory comfort to restore sleep had no effect so I took the sleep hygiene advice, arising to the dear recliner in My Space.  Scrolling through recorded shows on the 55" TV I found a relatively old one, an hour long but only stared for about twenty minutes.  Don't even remember what the show was about, other than a science or geography theme.  Before returning to bed, I diverted momentarily to the naproxen bottle, popped one without water, then quickly supine with the sensory comfort check list. Mattress firm, pillow supportive with just the right neck flexion, clothing and bedding comfortable against my skin, room cool but down comforter retained body heat.  Room dark if I kept my eyes closed to obscure minor window light.  Room silent unless I paid no attention to minor ambient sounds outside.  Within a few minutes of naproxen, some transient mid-esophageal discomfort with dissipated, musculoskeletal discomfort dissipated, followed by either one or two glorious sleep cycles that took me an hour past my usual wake time.  If the wrist alarm vibrated, I must have ignored it.  

I can still sense something not quite right, undecided about today's treadmill session which I should still do at lower intensity.

Semi-annual doctor's appointment in a few days.  One more thing to burden her with.

Sleep Diary

As I focus on getting better sleep, not for its own sake but as a path to being more functional when I'm not asleep, some experts recommend a sleep diary.  Some are available in cyberspace to capture and print out, which I did.  Most follow a similar format though vary by detail.  Entries are made shortly after wakening and before retiring for the night.  Mine covered a week, some extend for two, but it doesn't take long for a pattern to emerge.  Changing the pattern may prove difficult, as there are probably some fundamental biological realities that create it.  My diary showed predictability within a few days, but it also showed areas of uncertainty.

My Evening Log confirmed two or three caffeinated beverages, all consumed before 5PM.  They did not ask about chocolate, which I do eat after 5PM but not a lot on any day.  Alcohol is one serving on a typical day, never  more. They left the cutoff time at 5PM which can bridge Happy Hour for those who build that into their schedule, but for me it is sherry or port shortly before that or about half a bottle of beer with supper, occasionally the whole bottle.  Exercise is always done before 9PM, on a calendar schedule with rare lapses. Each session lasts 30 minutes.  

My medicines are constant, five chemicals swallowed at suppertime.  This can be an important wild card, as common medicines affect sleep.  Statins are best taken at night based on how they work.  The PPI seems to do better taken at night.  My antihypertensives offer flexibility, taken at night because taking all medicine one time per day enhances the likelihood that they will be taken.  I could try moving the SSRI.  However, I have given myself an extended drug holiday from this with little effect on early awakening.

Naps are more problematic.  Basically I have stopped intentional napping and have not returned to my bed outside of scheduled sleep times.  I did doze off three times this week, the longest estimated at 45 minutes.  While I do not return to bed once up, I will lie down on the living room couch and often take advantage of a reclining chair that keeps me at about 45 degrees tilt. Whether this affects sleep or not is uncertain.  I have tried to avoid the couch, or anything else horizontal, but it's a habit that requires more focus to undo.

My daytime assessment recorded as favorable five of seven days, tired one, morning stiffness and achiness one.  The pre-sleep ritual seems to be taking shape, watching the shows I recorded on the big screen TV in My Space or reading in bed for a short time before lights out.  One day I donated platelets, which pre-empts my scheduled exercise that day.

The Evening Log has more uncertainty.  I fixed the lights out and arise time, adhering to both with little flexibility, the key advice of any Sleep Hygiene initiative.  I fall asleep promptly, or at least I think I do. Most nights I awake twice, some nights once but for the rest of the night, I think.  I am unable to estimate if and when I return to sleep or how long I am awake.  My iTouch watch records sleep time, but it is really in bed time.  I don't have a good way of timing my actual sleep. I have tried a cell phone app to do this, and it captured my wakening better than it captured my sleep.  Identifiable sleep interrupters are invariably nocturia once the majority of nights.  I am sometimes awakened, sometimes already up.  The time at which I need to get up varies a bit.  I seem to be able to return to bed and relax if not resume some level of actual sleep. For two nights, some back and hip discomfort occurred.  I took naproxen once, more to be able to exercise on the treadmill the following day than to restore sleep.  One night I skipped two medicines with no effect.  I bought a new pillow which greatly enhanced comfort going to bed, though little impact on early awakening.  I took diphenhydramine one night which left me dragged the next morning without a material effect on the fundamental sleep pattern.  My self assessment of how I think I slept was mostly mediocre, never wretched, never optimal.  Yet except for the morning after the sleep aid I felt reasonably well each morning.

Making adjustments depends largely on what I want to achieve.  If my goal is optimal function through the day, I'm not doing badly despite the early awakening, which seems largely ingrained into my cycles.  What I have not done, largely via adverse experience, is get up when restless and use the time.  I find myself resetting to awake and wanting to catch up on the lost time in bed the following day.  It has been counterproductive, I think.  A sleep lab might be premature, though it would be nice to know when I am really asleep and for how long.  My environment is now largely ideal.  The schedule seems the right one.  I can still move the antihypertensives and ssri to the morning.  But as long as I feel good when I need to, which is largely true now, estimating my sleep as mediocre does not seem to detract from what I push myself to accomplish.

Wrist Alarm

Been trying unsuccessfully to restore my previously stable sleep pattern.  Read the pro's popular summaries of sleep hygiene.  Did sleep tracking by a smartphone app for two weeks which really didn't tell me anything I hadn't already figured out.  Watched a show on sleep hygiene, where I learned that there are some Cognitive Behavioral Interventions online and where I also learned that a lot of people who go to a sleep lab find that they get their first full night's sleep there.  That's a similar impression that I've had from the few nights I've spent at a hotel, so the barrier may be schedule.  I do not think it is environment.  My bed is comfortable, pillow maybe could be replaced.  Could use some of the $65 accumulated five dollar bills on that, but definitely not for a My Pillow, even if it is a good product. Comforter is warm, though I've made an effort to keep the bedroom a little cooler than I have before.  I cannot see the red numbers on the alarm clock without a concerted effort, which I rarely make.  And sleep latency is well within population norms.

Habits are another matter that need attention.  I exercise regularly two mornings of three, almost never consume caffeine after noon, except for minor amounts of chocolate, will have some sherry just before supper or a beer with supper, never both and none after supper.  And for the past few days I've not returned to bed at all between arising time and pre-determined sleep time.  Putting aside my screens still needs some work but I can set an evening hour when they shut down.  What the experts say is most important is the anticipatory schedule, which I've now set. Into bed at a fixed time with a half hour off screens before lights out.  My prescriptions, now five tablets taken at supper, are one of those wild cards, with only one recent change that I can try moving to the morning if no progress over the coming week.  And they all say the single best introduction is a fixed awake time with prompt arising no matter how you feel.  My iTouch works well for that.  The past few days the wrist nudge prodded me gently, and I proceeded on immediately to morning dental care.

I think I need to be a better taskmaster on this than I have been.  In the few days that I've implemented this I still awake at the same middle of the night times.  I've followed the advice of getting up after a half hour once.  It destroyed the next day, so I just make do and try to stay beneath my warm comforter for now.  Having done that I'm less tired over the next day, have less struggle with exercise or even with snow shoveling, though my mental acuity needed for some of my semi-annual intended projects could be better.  Always start with the easy stuff. Wrist alarm seems a good introduction.  And there's a scheduled doctor's appointment next month.  Sometimes do-it-yourself is not the best option.