Day one

Day one of the new sleep plan. So far? A modest success. I was in bed before midnight, I fell asleep and I woke up at a reasonable hour. I was relatively alert all day, although right now I am sleepy. And Smokey's being cuddly. Try and remain awake through that. Cats actively support napping all day, especially senior cats.

I had this big plan last night, all laid out. I had a vegetarian dinner with no tea, got home and immediately got ready for bed: teeth brushed, faced washed, pyjamas and everything. When sleepiness hit, I'd be so on the ball. I refused to look at my laptop all night and when I got tired, the Dude read aloud to me from Gods Behaving Badly. It's a good book, but I'd read it already so it helped me doze off.

Success. Sleep. But I woke up about half a dozen times and didn't feel fully refreshed. Maybe it'll take a couple weeks for better sleep to catch up with me.

Incidentally, the Dude's subscription of National Geographic arrived yesterday, and in it was a lengthy article about sleep. No one knows why we need it other than that we do. If we try and fight it, sleep wins. And if we don't get it, for some reason we die. Crazy, right? There's a genetic syndrome that you can develop in your 50s that eventually prevents you from sleeping altogether. It's called FFI, fatal familial insomnia. I mean, the word "fatal" is right in the name. That's pretty much right to the point, isn't it?

So I guess my insomnia could be worse. At least it's not that. I've always thought Parkinson's and Alzheimer's were the worst ways to go. "Awaking" to death sounds pretty ass.