My Morning Puzzle

Here it is, seven o'clock in the A.M., and I've completed the daily Sudoku in the morning paper. Whoda thunkit: not about completing the puzzle but doing so by 7:00?

I've never been a morning person. Certainly, the normal worker who is nighthawk by nature is forced to stumble out and about in a state of bewilderment at ungodly hours. (Or are they, in point of fact, the godly hours?) But once I retired and was able to fall into my own rhythms, I found myself staying up late and lying in a bit in the morning.

Oh, come on now. I wasn't all that bad; the lying in wasn't until noon, more like 9:00 or perhaps 10:00 in extreme cases. Although the larks among you might look askance at such sleeping in, I submit that the cause was not laziness as the wee hours would frequently find AC doing productive things. I mean to say that we owls never accuse the larks of being slothful when they retire at ridiculously early hours, so why the reverse? I can remember trying to learn the basics of Photoshop or html in those wee hours, for example when all good morning larks would be sound asleep, and it never occurred to me to think them lazy. Quite simply, my mind would frequently be humming along in great form in those after midnight hours, and it seemed wise to take advantage of it.

These days, however, although I endure nights of problematic sleep, I seldom find myself perking in those wee hours. Just last night, for example, I had to shut Dan Brown's latest wild romp through mystically symbolic adventures before midnight as my eyes were glueing beyond comfort. Sometimes, I'm now actually very tired in the evening, which was not the case just a few short years ago.

I can narrow much of the time frame of the change in waking and sleeping habits down to the past two years. When Nikki Dee was new, I would sometimes head over in the middle of the night to rock her and give Mom a few hours of rest. It wasn't all that onerous for me to do that, and the reward was great as I certainly bonded with the little tyke. However, when brother, Zach, came into this world just two years later, it was certainly fortuitous for all of us that he was a much better sleeper because Buppa no longer felt up to middle-of-the-night-rocking-sessions.

Why my switch suddenly flipped after all this time, I know not for sure, but I suspect it has to do with sleep issues. Frankly, the quality of my repose is now frequently not up to snuff, and I often find myself sleeping only on the surface. Whereas, not long ago I would, could and did stay up late, once I got to bed, I tended to sleep fairly well on most nights. Although I still enjoy some good sleeps, for the most part, it is no longer so. My best guess is that, usually, poor sleep on the previous night causes me to be tireder on the ensuing evening ... and so on in a circular pattern that is not altogether pleasing to me.

So, that's why it is noteworthy, to me and no one else, I'm sure (although I'm afflicting you with my ruminations regardless), that I completed a Sudoku by 7:00 AM this morn. It represents quite a sudden alteration in the pattern of my life. Although I find that it's not altogether disagreeable to rise and shine (or rise and puzzle as it were), please pardon this writer if he is not completely delirious with the cause of it all.