20 Minutes of Insomnia

I have developed the habit of waking up at 4:40 every morning.

Waking up in the middle of the night is nothing new to me. If I can't turn off my thoughts and go back to sleep, I simply turn on the TV. The moment that my head is caught up in something that I am half interested in, the words on the TV replace the words in my head. Voila! Presto! I fall back into a deep slumber.

Why do I remember that I wake up at 4:40 every morning? Because there is nothing on the TV but infomercials, news programs and various other programing that holds no interest to me.

Thus, I cannot seem to force the thoughts that have begun circulating within my head to stop. And I lie in bed, tossing and turning, flipping and checking channels and trying to feign interest in the news. Until 5:00.

Five o'clock is the magic hour. A program that interests me (enough to turn off the thought processes that are running in high gear after 20 minutes) comes on.

The program starts with a short intro and then it is straight into the credits. Beyond that point? I couldn't tell you what happens. Because the moment my head is relaxed with the thought that someone else's words are going to fill my mind, I relax. Poof! I fall fast asleep.

My alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m. and I'm ready to face the day.

I'm not sure what I would do without that added half hour of sleep. I am sure that I am soon to find out ... daylight savings time is around the corner. Since everyone else in the free world (or at least within our TV station radius) turns their clocks, while we remain the same time ... my regularly scheduled programming is going to be delayed by one hour.

It could be a long winter.