Waking The Dead

I sleep heavy. That's a relatively recent change in my natural instinctual way of doing things. I remember being a very light sleeper growing up. Someway somehow, when the kids were born I became the heavy log sleeper and my wife changed to a much lighter sleeper than she'd been previuosly. It's been like this for a long time, and I don't see any end or reversal in sight.

For the past few years, my wife has asked that the alarm clock/radio be moved to her side of the bed. For whatever reason, it hasn't been done, but this week with us still getting used to the routine of no winter break and needing to be up for work and school, my heavy sleeping has gotten the better of us. Last night, I moved the clock/radio - along with the power strip is was attached to, under the bed, behind the headboard, all that. The clock is on her side now.

So of course, I woke up early.

She might leave a comment here that she didn't sleep that well, waking up at various times last night for the dawg and for our daughter's entry to our room, but that kind of thing happens fairly frequently already, clock or no clock. It's rare that I wake up as well as I did relatively "on my own" - and it's the morning after the clock/radio gets moved to the other side of the bed. Coincidence? Of course, I also turned the TV off last night and fell asleep before 11pm, but naaaahh - that wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Ultimately, there's some switch inside that says "I want to go back to bed rather than get up" or "Ok, let's get it started". It's curling up tighter under the covers versus swinging out into the abyss of the day. If my little girl stands at my bedside and just stares at me snoring, I'll wake up. If my alarm clock goes off enough to wake up the zipcode, I can sleep through that. Freaky.

And oh yeah, we're gonna start reading Waking The Dead with our small group next week. Thought it might be appropriate to get my morning wake-up routine ironed out beforehand.