May 23, 2013 Changing the sleep pattern

I recently read that insufficient sleep can cause the body to retain belly fat.  As that is where I tend to carry most of my weight, I figured it was worth my while to try to alter my pattern a bit as I had gotten in the habit of staying up until 12:30 or 1:00 AM when I have to be up by 7:00.  For the last few days, I've made it a point to get to bed no later than 11:00 or 11:30.  Much to my surprise, I'm sleeping solidly until about 6:30 when I finally awaken needing to answer the call of nature.  When I stay up until 1 or even 2 sometimes, I find that I'm up every hour or two, so I don't get a full night's sleep.  I'm not sure at this point why going to bed earlier makes me sleep better, but neither I nor the cats I disturb when I get up several times during the night are complaining right now!  Dylan is quite happy to sleep, wrapped around my head, for a solid 6-7 hours without disturbance. 

So far, I've seen no major changes in my form, but it's only been a couple of days!  Even my thrice weekly jaunts to the gym take longer to show results than that!   But as every little bit helps, and if nothing else, I'm well rested, I believe I will continue as I have begun.

Tonight marks the beginning of another four days of dancing with a couple of gym workouts mixed in for variety.  The local Cajun/Blues festival is back and it looks like a large contingency of the dancers will be in attendance on Sunday (we don't want to wear ourselves out by going Saturday and miss our usual Saturday night dancing!) for music, fun, sun, dancing and delicious food!  Even better, the usual Memorial Day scorcher came early so the weekend looks to be pleasantly warm.  Bring out the sunscreen, the hats and plenty of water, and we're good to go!  Thank goodness, I'll have three more days to recuperate next week, as I'm taking a couple of vacation days as my birthday present to ME! 

I read a really wonderful post yesterday which talked about writing retreats at home.  I fully intend to make use of some of the suggestions, and hope to get a few thousand words (which are NOT garbage) added to my book between now and Wednesday.  So if my blog posts are not up to their usual standards, I hope my readers will forgive me as I use my words on another project which has been woefully neglected for some time now.  Who knows?  I might even start formulating an idea for a work of fiction (no romance novels, please.  I like to read them, but am dreadfully underqualified to actually write one!  I'll leave that to the experts like Nora Roberts and Catherine Coulter).

As the clock ticks closer to midnight (or it would tick if I had an analog clock in the house!)  I'll stick to my latest promise to myself and wind this thing up (pun intended) so I can lay my weary head upon my pillow and soak up some zzzz's so I can tackle tomorrow's tasks and finish early in case the work day ends earlier than usual and the holiday weekend takes off with a bang and a flurry of dancing feet!


My gratitudes tonight are:
1. I am grateful for 5 days off to play, write, relax and???
2. I am grateful for modern science which has come to the aid of one friend's daughter and another's baby cousin this week.
3. I am grateful for tomorrow's full moon which could bring some interesting surprises.
4. I am grateful for a weekend filled with dancing and friendship.
5. I am grateful that this is my massage week as all of this activity has my body craving some serious pampering!

Love and light.