Monday, March 11, 2013

How I Spent My One-Day Vacation

For the first time in a very long while, I had nothing on my schedule last weekend.

Saturday, I got some things done that needed to get done.  Sunday?

The Disney Princesses Jumbo Activity Book is my bitch.
Sunday, I slept in.  I got caught up on three weeks’ worth of Newsweeks.  I out of nowhere remembered the song “Torn” by Natalie Imbruglia, downloaded it, and listened to it nine times in a row while lying on my back in the middle of my living room.  I colored a picture in a coloring book using as many of the 96 colors in my Crayola selection as I could get away with.  I opened a window and listened to the rain.  I watched four episodes of Arrested Development.

I thought about how I have a pretty great life.

My landlady, apparently feeling sorry for me after I railed about how much Newsweek in digital format is terrible (which it is – since when do I wait three weeks to read Newsweek?), has started giving me her old New Yorkers.  The New Yorker comes out every week and is a beast of a magazine; some of the articles are long enough to be novellas.  (Actually, some of the articles are novellas.) There’s almost always something in there worth spending half an hour reading, though, and in a recent issue there was a piece about sleep.

DID YOU KNOW that when you are lying in bed at night, trying to drift off but failing miserably, there is a good chance you are falling asleep for short periods of time and then waking up again (and not, as you might think, remaining awake the whole time)?  Furthermore, DID YOU KNOW that prior to the advent of electric lighting, most people did not sleep just once a day?  For much of human history, most people went to bed at sundown, but then maybe they’d wake up in the middle of the night and do some shit and then go back to bed.  (Ben Franklin reportedly liked to use the time between his “first sleep” and his “second sleep” sitting naked in a chair reading.)

That made me feel much better about the way I wake up many mornings around 3:00 a.m. for a brief spot of contemplation before going back to sleep.  (I used to only contemplate how dumb it was for me to keep waking up in the middle of the night, but now I’ve been given leeway to contemplate on how much like Benjamin Franklin I am…sans the naked reading and whatnot.)

Thusly, last night, when I felt tired shortly after the sun went down (even though daylight savings time meant I should have been the opposite of tired), I went with it.

Add “went to bed early in an attempt to stave off daylight savings jet lag” to my list of accomplishments from yesterday.

Do I know how to milk a Sunday or what?

9 comments:

  1. That's a great way to spend a Sunday. And now I have a name for what I am feeling: daylight savings jet lag! (see my blog)

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    1. BLOG CROSSOVER EVENT! I will dutifully listen to "Leave Me Alone" as soon as I'm on a computer with speakers... (Do I know that one? I probably do. I just have to listen to make sure.)

      I think it was last year that I read something about how it takes a full week to recover from "springing forward." Personally, I think it's dumb (and outdated) that we fall back in the first place. And this man agreed with me.

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  2. We should either STAY on DST or else forget it entirely! Wasn't it started as "war time"?

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    1. I agree!! Let's just stay with this time! As if winter wasn't depressing enough, why voluntarily go around making it dark at 4:00 p.m.? :(

      Yeah, I think it was WWI (?), and it was try to save energy. But I don't think there's been any evidence that it actually does save energy...not to mention, no one changes their behavior anymore according to the sun (whether or not we should is another question entirely - and a moot one) so at this point, all it seems to be is a twice-yearly ritual of messing up people's sleeping habits. I'm not a fan.

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    2. P.S. That was a new Natalie Imbruglia song to me!! I liked it. :) Excellent choice (even if it was a tad depressing!).

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  3. To answer a couple of your questions: "Yes, I did know about our current sleep pattern being unnatural and untraditional. I even looked into it further and found out somewhere in the 19th century we started to try and sleep in one long haul. Parents were encouraged to make their children sleep in one long haul. Also, there are quite a few pieces of literature in which the broken sleep comes to attention."

    I'll stop boring you now.

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    1. I feel like I knew this at some point earlier in my life but I had completely forgotten about it. And now that I know about it again, it makes perfect sense considering what I know about my own sleep habits (and those of anyone I happen to talk about sleep with).

      Being aware of it, I'll keep an eye out for when I'm reading! :)

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  4. Awesome colouring in!!

    I love that as a fully fledged adult it's still possible get a sense of real satisfaction doing something so simple so well! Sounds like a great weekend! I plan to spend some of the easter weekend doing fairly similar...and now I can blame daylight savings jet lag (ours go forward on Saturday) for my lazy weekend :)

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    1. Clarabel! Thank you! And AWESOME! I hope you enjoy your lazy Easter/DST/coloring (or whatever) weekend as much as I did. :D I totally agree...it's amazing the joy you can get as an adult out of the things you took for granted as a kid!!

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