A Soliloquy on sleeping soundly

I’m a night-owl. I have been as far back as I can remember. And all my adult life I’ve had to get up early for work, or if I was working an afternoon shift I got up early to swim before work instead of after. I’ve been retired for almost 6 years now, and I live alone, so I’m finally able to indulge myself in going to bed about 2 or 3 in the morning and getting up whenever, usually about 10am.

I live on the 12th floor of an apartment building and my windows face a street, a pool and skating rink complex, an elementary school about a block away, and the backside of a strip mall. Between kids, trucks backing into a loading dock, road traffic and people in my building and neighboring apartments moving around to start their day, there’s a bit of morning noise. Not conducive to sleeping late.

My solution was a box fan. It was my white noise machine. I put it on my dresser and turned it on high and it drowned out most sleep-disrupting sounds. 

Until it died two weeks ago.

I was staying with a buddy in his cabin in the mountains for a week, so when I got home I thought I’d try doing without the fan to see if I really needed it. It turned out I needed it a lot. The apartment building next to mine decided it was time to repave and repaint their parking lot. The arena is having some maintainance done which involves cutting metal with a grinder, but only in the morning. The lawn guys mow the City parks and nearby green strip at the crack of early. And there’s the unknown idiot in my building who likes to check his car alarm a dozen times on his way out.

Yesterday I bought a new box fan. Last night I got to bed just before 3am after turning the fan on high, and fell asleep with a smile on my face. I woke up this morning feeling great, no sleep interruptions at all. Happy, happy, happy. 

I looked at the clock on the headboard. 

It was 7:15am.

Thanks, Daryl!