Because here comes another sleep update. Even though I was with family at the hospital till 1am, got to bed around 2am, and didn’t get to sleep until 3am, I still woke at 8:10am and jumped straight into the shower. I notice that sometimes I’m up in 5 minutes, sometimes 15. 20-minutes is a good time. And there’s been no more groaning, no more struggling to get out of bed. The repeated alarms sufficiently wake me up. It’s a good thing I’m not sharing a bed with anyone right now, 20 alarms in a row would be annoying for someone without my condition. Although I have considered strapping my phone to my ankle at night and setting it to vibrate, when I’m visiting family or something. That could do it.

Lark

Cause I know you’re all dying to hear it! Oddly enough, I had some sort of alarm malfunction. If you weren’t with us earlier, when I described my mostly untested method for getting up on time, it’s very simple:

Decide what time you want to get up. Set your alarm for 20 minutes earlier. Then set your alarm for every 2-minute increment until you get to the time you actually want to get up. I’m at 8:00am, 8:02, 8:04, all the way till 8:20. Baby steps. I call it the ‘brute force’ method. I liken it to having someone work on your house, the noise constantly waking you up until it happens so many times you can’t get back to sleep. As I’ve said before, this wouldn’t be necessary except I work from home and can make my own hours. Like you might imagine, that’s really messed up my sleep schedule, I’m trying to whip it back into shape.

Anyway, this morning my alarm stopped 3-4 alarms in (of 11 total alarms). I thought maybe I slept through them, but now I’m certain they didn’t go off. I wonder if it’s due to a glitch in my phone, or what. I’m going to try to look for a different alarm program later. Anyway, at 8:35am I roused, looked at my watch, and hopped in the shower. Crisis averted! YAY!!!

Lark

Yes, I managed to get up at the same time today. Two days in a row!!! I’m awesome!!!

I’m awake! I’m easily impressed by myself! I’m Lark!!!

aka Strategies for early waking. So how about one more post about my sleep schedule? Keeping in mind my two earlier posts (here and here), I actually made myself get up at a set time this morning. I got to sleep about 4:15 am and woke up at 8:30.

I’ll explain my method and touch on another method I’ve read about in a bit, but first let me go into my background.

You read right. The windshield wipers on my car are making me feel kind of ill. Not like I’m going to throw up or anything, just a strong unease. I just now figured it out.

I used to have this plastic night stand thing that I put my cell phone on. My cell doubles as an alarm clock. I’ve since gotten rid of that night stand, but I just today had my phone (set to vibrate) on a similar plastic surface. I got a call, making the phone vibrate. I felt a general feeling of unease. That finally made the connection for me.

That’s right folks, my windshield wipers make a similar sound to my cell’s alarm clock vibrating on my night stand. So similar that using my windshield wipers gives me the same sense of unease my alarm clock gives me first thing in the morning. That’s weird.

Now that’s got me thinking. I’ve since started using some of my favorite songs as the alarm tone. Probably not a good idea, right? Ugh, what if the damage is already done?

Lark