How old is Vaderling these days?
Sounds like a control thing, the not eating of things he likes.
Yeah, it does sound like a control thing. He has it, and an iron will to back it up(lemme tell ya about potty training that boy some other time)
Tonight, he’s 11 going on 3
Screw it. Another sleepless night. Why do I bother trying?
It’s 0552, and I cannot sleep. Thankfully, I have no need to be up early tomorrow (today?) but why the hell can I never sleep at night, on a normal schedule?
As soon as you find out, please let the rest of us know. Gawd, I hate this. Renders me absolutely useless for months on end.
I’ll stop now because it also makes me cranky and cantankerous.
Boo
I had Cracker Jacks today as a snack on the homeward leg of a 136 mile round trip. They weren’t as good as I remember. Less molassesey and peanutey and more caramel popcorny. And what happened to the lickem n stickem tattoos? Some lame sticker with a qcode thingy they want me to scan for some damn advertising thing or other “prize”.
Sigh
You can never go home again
A friend of mine just sent me this article. It’s 2 a.m. and she’s always up this late, too. It’s about extreme night owls and how we are perfectly normal, just on the outside of “average sleepers”. We could fully embrace it except that society isn’t quite to the point of letting us be who we are. 
Tattoos? When I was a kid, we didn’t get no stinkin’ tattoos! 
We got much cooler prizes: tiny puzzles (Get the teeny metal ball into one of the declivities.), whistles, little tops, and small plastic figures. (I seem to remember getting a cowboy.) I understand that before my time, kids got things like pocket watches.
Thanks, Aurora. I quickly read the article, and I have comments, but I’ll let them go until sometime tomorrow. I’d like to read it more fully, so as to have more informed comments. But on a quick skim, I seem to fit the profile of the people who are night owls.
Great article~thanks! Read it while waiting to drag a middle schooler into the car to drop her off at school. Gaahhh. I realize I have been this ‘night owl’ all my life and it’s exhausting to try to shoehorn myself into the world’s smug assumption that more ‘worthy’ people are early to bed and early to rise.
8:30am. Almost time to slap on the eyeshades and try to catch an hour or two of sleep to make up for what I didn’t get from 2am-6:30a.
Boo
I slept better last night than I have in a while, and I feel extraordinarily decadent, but if it works, it works … right?
I’m asking y’all for validation that what I did was worth a decent night’s sleep, cuz they’re gonna take away my hippie card at the next meeting. I left the A/C running with the windows open.
I love having the windows open at night - the cool breeze, the crickets & tree frogs singing the songs of their people. But the humidity, I do not love. Yesterday, I finally decided the A/C was gonna run approx. the same amount whether or not the windows were open.
Yes, yes, I’m paying to cool off the whole block. But the payment shouldn’t be significantly bigger … right?? … and the payOFF (blessed sleep) has gotta be worth a buck or two.
You did right. You got to sleep. I have done the same. This hippie heartily endorses your choice.
Heading back in to my sound machine and eyeshades. Ahhhhhhh 
Thanks. Objectively, my rational brain knows this. But the darker, irrational parts are much less kind to me. It’s nice to hear it from someone else.
I got dark curtains so no need for eyeshades. But earplugs? Now those are a necessity.
I thought moving out alone would mean no more earplugs, because nobody else was snoring in my ear anymore. But this neighborhood is noisy especially with the boom-boom cars, and the new cat is fond of running around like an idiot in the wee hours of dawn.
My alarm is loud enough that I still hear it - my hearing is pretty sensitive.
But you can get vibrating alarms for under your pillow for like twenty bucks or less.
I have deformed ear canals (the audiologist has a more polite term for them) so I can’t do ear plugs, ergo the professional sound machine. I even have a tiny one for travel (if any of us ever get to travel again). I have light blocking curtains but since my biggest windows face east and Dutch elm beetles knocked out the huge trees shading my house, I use an eyeshade also.
I live one block off a major cross town street (well, what passes for a major cross town street in fly over country) and the weekend night tricked out hot car antics could wake the dead. Plus there is a family of fools who take turns on their misfiring mini-bike up and down in front of my house and then down the alley in back. Each extended family member seems to have to take a loop or two late at night. The local soundtrack is completed by the occasional bass booming. If I was in a car with speakers that loud my ears would bleed.
Cat zoomies? I have 3. I’m not saying more, they might hurt me.
Boo
Sometimes I think I might miss the sound of cats playing tag around the house at night. But only sometimes, until I get on here and read a few comments by current cat owners. OTOH, if you were to show up at my front door right this very second as I type this with cat(s) in hand and offer a straight trade for my son, I’d probably actually think about it for a second or two.
We could just consider it a prisoner exchange.
Straight up 1:1 or per lb?
Boo
well, we can work out the ratio later, first I gotta figure who’s the prisoner, me or him
Look for earplugs that are wax. You knead them with your fingers to soften the wax, then shove them in your ears. The soft wax conforms to whatever (weird) shape your ear canals are.
We used these on my son when he had the tubes in his ears, at bath time. The ENT suggests “dunking” a cotton ball in vaseline to block the ears from getting wet. That works, but OHGAWD it’s so messy! The wax ear plugs are perfect for this purpose!
~VOW
Aurora, thanks again for that Guardian article. I sound very similar to a few people in it. It’s good to know that I’m not alone. Like them, I’ve been regarded as lazy and shiftless because I’m just not at my best before noon; and I took particular note of the person who experienced marriage problems because of it–I did too.
I hope that I can manage tomorrow. I have a Zoom conference that starts at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, of all times. Of course, the conference chair is a “morning lark.” I’ve decided that if I am ever elected to the chair, I’ll hold conferences at 5:00 PM. On Wednesdays.
Yeah, I definitely see myself in there. I do occasionally have insomnia but being a night owl is why I’m posting online at 4 a.m. I missed out on a lot of sleep over the years having to conform to “normal” job hours. I always stayed up late and would get 5 or maybe 6 hours of sleep. Then I would sleep 10 hours on the weekend. The two best jobs that worked for me had the hours of 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and noon to 8 p.m.
After I retired in January, I thought I’d still go to sleep at 2 or 3 a.m. and get up noonish but it just seems that 4 or 5 a.m. works better for me. And right now with the pandemic there is no need to follow any timetable since I’m not going anywhere anyway so I’m ok with that. But it’s still out of synch with most of the world and I do feel that people sort of judge me for it. So it was good to read that article and understand that it is a perfectly normal pattern for a lot of people. Even cavemen did it! 
Hope your call with the morning lark went well Spoons!
Thanks, Aurora. It went well. I fortified myself with plenty of coffee, and was able to express myself well (i.e. not groggily) in front of the other participants. Looking forward to sleeping later (likely much later) tomorrow.