My Terrible Sleep Schedule

As you can guess from the title of this post, my sleep schedule is awful. After a long day of work, taking the kids to their activities, and then getting them to bed, all I want to do is have time to myself. There's often laundry or trash or cleaning the litter box, but when that's done, I sit on the couch and turn on the television. I generally see what shows I have recorded on the DVR or turn on a sporting event. We also have Netflix and Amazon, but I find that I don't use streaming services nearly often as I should.

With the kids asleep or at least in bed, I have a set up with the television on and the laptop or my phone right next to me. It's time to enjoy the long list of shows and movies that I want to watch while also updating my fantasy sports teams, writing blog posts, answering trivia questions, playing chess, or some combination of all of these. Some nights, Ziggy jumps on the couch and curls up next to me.(That's either before, after, or both the multiple times that Ziggy eats paper or the Kleenex box in order for me to give him food. This happens at least 3-4 times a night even though his bowl is full.) And then, I fall asleep on the couch.  

From there, it might be anywhere between 20-30 minutes to a few hours before I wake up. Now if I was smart, I'd go directly to bed. I'm not smart. I'll check my email. If it's after midnight, I might play Wordle. I do just enough to get my brain going again, and then I go to sleep. While I'm still able to fall asleep quickly in my bed some nights, some nights it takes time to fall back asleep. Some nights, I stay up cashing in my bad luck. Some nights, I call it a draw. (There's 1-2 bad words in this song/video.)

On weeknights, between the time I crawl into bed and wake up in the morning, I generally get about 5-6 hours of sleep. This is not nearly enough. The other problem is that this isn't continuous. Approximately every other night, Ziggy wakes me up. Sometimes it's just to jump on the bed and curl up at my feed, but usually it's about him getting older. He's 14.5 now. I carry him to the basement so that he can use the litter box, and then I shake his food bowl, since heaven forbid you can see any portion of the bottom of his bowl. 

This pattern repeats itself almost every night. Any suggestions on how to break this? I really want my time to watch TV and do things I need to get done. However, I know that I need more sleep.

I'm Going To Die

Maybe not the best headline here. I mean, not to be depressing or morbid, but everyone is going to die. Except for Betty White. We can't let her die.

Anyway, two articles that I saw over the last few days really concerned me. Here's the first from CNN.

Several popular breakfast foods, including Cheerios and Nature Valley products, continue to test positive for trace amounts of a controversial herbicide that may increase the risk of cancer, according to a report released Wednesday by an environmental advocacy group.

I have cereal for breakfast nearly every single morning. While I've mixed in some Wegmans brand cereals lately, I generally eat Honey Nut Cheerios. Is it really too much to ask to not have herbicides in my cereal?

Although this second study funded by the National Institutes of Health relates to women, I feel like this must impact men too.

Sleeping with a television or light on in the room may be a risk factor for gaining weight or developing obesity, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The research, which was published online June 10 in JAMA Internal Medicine, is the first to find an association between any exposure to artificial light at night while sleeping and weight gain in women. The results suggest that cutting off lights at bedtime could reduce women’s chances of becoming obese.

So they're saying that falling asleep the majority of nights while sitting on the couch with the lights, television, and computer or phone on (usually with Ziggy curled up next to me and then waking up a few hours later and spending a few minutes checking email or seeing sports results before going back to bed) is a bad thing?

I'm going to become obese because of my terrible sleep pattern (which leads to other health problems) and get cancer thanks to herbicides in my Honey Nut Cheerios. Lovely.