Mornings, how do I loathe thee, let me count the ways...

I have a love/hate relationship with mornings. I love the morning stillness, the quiet. I love the freshness of mornings. I love the newness and the brightness. I love everything about mornings except what I have to do in them: get out of bed.

This act of getting myself out of bed is so rough that it has almost ruined the "a.m." part of each day for me. It's a struggle each and every morning...and it requires a technique that is almost impossible to find. If I get out of bed too quickly, I get lightheaded and black out (no fail, every morning). If I get out too slowly, it takes much more willpower than I possess first thing in the morning. Eventually, one way or the other, I always make it out of bed, and, once I am out of bed, it usually gets easier from there. I say usually. The last few mornings have been just brutal! My body is naturally kind of numb for a good 1/2 hour after getting up but lately it's lasted until about 11 o'clock! My legs feel like lead and I don't feel like my blood is pumping quite up to par just yet. It's like everything that was slowed down for sleep doesn't wake up when the alarm goes off...it takes a couple hours. And in the meantime I'm left trying to function with a still-sleeping body. Does that sound familiar to anyone else out there? HOW DO YOU FUNCTION LIKE THAT?!?

Anyway, yesterday morning I was having such a hard time keeping my eyes open and focused during class that I left class partway through, went to the bathroom, and jumped around for a while. I did some jumping jacks, swung my arms, swung my legs...anything to get my blood flowing. And do you think that helped? Nope. Still falling asleep. Still numb and sloth-like. So this morning before class I thought I would try to do some exercises and have some coffee before class to try to avoid the drowsiness altogether. I did some jumping jacks and jumped around a bit, trying to wake up my body a bit and took my coffee with me to class. To no avail. I was just as sleepy as yesterday! What to do, what to do?

Some may suggest that perhaps I should go to bed earlier. Well, this would seem logical. In fact, I've thought of it myself. However, Nathan and I have a job which requires us to be working until at least 10pm every night...and then we need showers...and then we need to unwind...and before we know it, it's after 11pm and we're still not in bed. The only logical solution would be to completely shift my morning back about 3 hours. Instead of getting up at 7am, I would get up at 10am. That way I would get 3 hours more sleep every night, my body would wake up only 1 hour after getting out of bed instead of 4 hours later. I wouldn't need naps, and I would be much more rested! Let's see, do you think I'll be able to convince the school that we should shift the classes back a couple hours??? Hmm...it might be worth a try.