Well, the good news was that
a) They really are sweet, pleasant, polite and well-behaved (I even keep saying I want to invite one of them (because she’s the one girl in a sea of boys, now that her older sister has married and left home) to come stay with us for a week or so in the summer)
b) They were only there for 4 days, and
c) I myself do not have eight children.
Silver lining, Baby, silver lining. 
2 or so hours before work, 2 or so hours after work. When I get up in the morning, and there are people in my house who are also awake, my whole day starts on a poor note.
My job involves constant interaction with coworkers and the public for at least 8 hours a day, so I need my time alone to re-assemble myself.
We’ve already agreed that if we ever move in together, we’ll have our own wings on opposite sides of the mansion.
My husband and I both need our “quiet time” - his is early in the morning before I wake up - from maybe 4 AM to 6 or so - mine is after he’s gone to bed at night (he usually goes to bed around 8-ish) for a few hours. This is when we can watch whatever WE want on TV, read, etc. Sometimes my son comes downstairs to talk, but other than that and the dog wanting to be petted, I’m pretty much left alone. Some of my happiest moments have been when I’ve been home sick and they’ve both been out. I don’t mean that in a bad way, just in a way that sometimes it’s nice not to have to be “on” - know what I mean?
My schedule is sort of like tdn’s. I’m not married and I live alone. I go to karate for about an hour and a half most days after work, come home, shower and have “me” time until I go to bed which is about 5 hours.
The boyfriend gets up way earlier than I do so if he calls it’s going to be way before I go to sleep.
In fact, if I end up not getting any solitary time before my pre-scheduled bed time I will read or watch TV for at least an hour and stay up an hour late just to get this time.
I get mine in the morning. An hour and a half to two hours and I’m good. It’s a matter of getting up before everyone else (wife & two kids) does. My wife gets hers at night after we’ve all gone to bed. As shy and needy for alone time as I am, I’ve never been a good hermit.
I know I need solitude, but I have never thought about how much I need. As much as I can get? I think I need a couple of hours every day; when we have busy weekends where we are visiting all weekend long, I start to go twirly, too (good word for it, auntie em) and want people to just LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE!!! As much as I need solitude, the funny thing about my husband is that he is the one person in the world (approximately) that I can co-exist with. We do, however, have our own rooms in the house (I strongly recommend this to every couple - my space is MINE, and his is HIS), and we are both okay with spending hours apart evenings and weekends.
What counts as solitude for me is when I wake so early that I am in my home office and on my computer before the dawn newspaper arrives.
After that, it’s just regular time where I haven’t been interrupted yet but expect to be any second.
As much as I dearly love my boyfriend, I really do miss my alone time since we’ve been living together for the past almost 2 years. I would really like to have 2 hours of “me” time a night after work. But lately I have noticed that he seems to get offended if I want to do my own thing. Part of it is that we recently moved to a new area and he doesn’t have any friends (yet). So I am really hoping he finds some dudes to start hanging out with so I can get the house to myself for a few hours a week!
Anyway I really do miss my alone time (sigh) 
I get tons of solitude. 2 hours of commuting (round trip) with no radio in the car. And I work alone in my film vault, which means that there are days that go by when I have no contact with anyone (in person or by phone) for several hours straight. Sometimes, that even lasts all day.
The hardest part is that the only personal contact I really enjoy is with my wife, but since she gets no solitude time at work (and her commute is more harried), sometimes the only “alone time” she gets is at home, so even if I’m eager to hang out with her all day or all weekend, sometimes I need to give her her alone time (which means alone time for me as well, unless you count the cats).
I’m a sociable hermit I guess–my job requires me to interact constantly with people ten hours a day and I get prickly and need to brush the vibes off myself with quiet time. I love my drive to and from work, when I listen to music I like and can sing or yell and cuss at the stupid drivers if I want to. I also dig the time from when I wake up to when I leave–I have a fairly early schedule so the SO usually doesn’t get up with me and if he does I prefer he not interact much with me. My only real grump is that I spent quite a lot of time living alone and grew to like having the house to myself, but the SO works at home so I never seem to have time with absolutely no other human around and I miss it sometimes. I’m very good at being alone in a crowd, as it were, I dive into a book or my laptop and since we’ve been together twenty years we’re okay with ignoring each other when we’re preoccupied, but I just like the time when there’s nobody else around and I do miss it. I can always take the dog for a walk if I need solitude, but it seems wrong to me that I have to leave MY house–I wish there were some way I could get a few hours a week to have the house to myself, if for no other reason than I HATE doing housework with anyone else watching me!
I like at least a few hours a day, but I’m quite happy with more. Over Thanksgiving break, I stayed at school, which meant that the only human contact was during meals and over teh intarwebs. I was kind of curious what the effect would be - I was perfectly fine with it. Got a lot of work done. And I pretty much get enough solitude day-to-day.