*Yawn*

I have small children that like to get up at the crack of dawn, so I generally like to hang out with my husband in the evening after they go to bed, have a little ‘me’ time, then go to bed before 11 PM. I have no explanation of why, for the last three or four nights, it has been at or around 1 AM before my head makes contact with my pillow.

In high school I had to get up at an ungodly hour to drive all the way across town to get to school on time, but in my first year of college my first class wasn’t until 9 AM and the building with the classroom was 20 feet from the dorm building, so I could get away with rolling out of bed at 8:50 and still make it to class on time.

It wasn’t until I was living in an apartment off campus that I started sleeping through my first class on a semi-regular basis (and sometimes my second class, as well). At this point in my life I was under the impression that 4 AM was the best time to have an active social life. Not that I was out dancing at a club or anything. I was usually on my computer, chatting with friends who lived in Colorado or Oklahoma.

One day I had an important appointment early in the morning. I went to bed early the night before, got up at 8 AM, and made it to the appointment on time. When it was over, I looked at the time. I didn’t have to be at work until 11, and normally I would still have been asleep for several hours. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I ended up running some errands: put fuel in my car, got some groceries, etc. Then I was a good forty-five minutes early for work. I can remember standing with the manager, deciding what to eat before I started working, and commenting to her, “I never realized how much stuff you can get done before 11 AM,” to which she snorted and replied, in a tone that told me it should have been obvious: “Uh... yeah."

It’s probably a good thing that I get up so early now, I’ve got plenty of things to do and sometimes don’t have enough time in the day to do them. Tonight, I promise, I’ll be in bed at or before 10 o’clock.