New Thing #43: Early To Bed and Early To Rise

Things are busy around here this time of year. That's not a complaint, just a statement of fact.

Weekends are tough - my wife usually has a couple of tutoring sessions scheduled during the day, meaning my day is dominated by my daughters.

So come report-writing season, it's a tough juggling act for me.

On top of that, when I have to dig out from more than two feet of snow, there just aren't enough hours in the day.

So I created some more.

Here's what happened: Saturday I got very little report writing done...but I did do a lot of shoveling. I didn't nap....I was tired.

So I decided to go to bed very early Saturday night (lights were out for me by 8:30) and wake up all the earlier on Sunday morning. (I've planned this before, but never followed through. So following through on it is why it's a 'New Thing'.)

I set the alarm for 4:30, thinking I'd probably snooze it a couple of times. I hit snooze once, but didn't even need it - I was up for good within five minutes.

I have to tell you - it was great.

I got some reports written, took a shower at around my normal weekday time, and was able to make the Sunday Dunkin' run and have breakfast on the table for all my ladies before they were out of bed.

By 10am I was able to dig out our second car and I felt like I had already put in a day's work with plenty of hours to go in the day. I didn't even nap on Sunday, and only felt tired a couple of times. (But here it is Tuesday when this posts, and Monday night was kind of rough. We'll have to see how long into the week this carries over.)

Overall, it went so well the thought occurred to me I could make this a regular occurrence.

I'm sure eventually the early hours would catch up to me, and I'm sure I'd stop thinking it was such a great idea when baseball games started up at night, but it's a pretty good lifestyle. And I'll tell you what: it is peaceful outside at 4:30 in the morning.

I also noticed, shortly after waking up, that there were already tweets from the likes of Peter Gammons and Buster Olney. Gammons is probably up at 4:30am because he's of that age where people tend to do that sort of thing...but Olney strikes me as someone who subscribes to the 'create more hours in the day' theory.

It's a disciplined lifestyle. I don't know if, for someone who really needs a lot of sleep in order to function, I can keep it up. (A good breakfast earlier than Sunday, when I waited to get the Dunkin', and some nutritious snacks during the day would help.) But it may be worth trying if I'm out to get things accomplished without sacrificing time with my girls.

New Thing #15: Back To The Office (For My Wife)

For the past four years, I think, my wife has worked from home. We've been lucky that she's had steady work since she's stopped working full-time...but also because there are certain conveniences that come for a family of five when one of the parents is working from home.

But now she's back to work - three days a week in an office, anyway.

And I think we're all prepared for those to be three pretty hectic days a week.

Monday was our first run-through. It went OK.

For me, it was a Monday that wasn't as busy as most. So the jury is still out...Mondays are usually my busiest day and we'll see how the end of the day feels when I'm tired and dinner has to be made and the kids have to get to bed and we have to start all over on Tuesday.

(I realize that this new quandary for us is a five-day-a-week issue for some people. More power to them. I'm simply pointing out it's new to us.)

In an ideal world, I'll be able to leave work early enough on Mondays that I'll have dinner waiting for everyone else when they get home. That's the goal...we'll see if it happens.

The good news? Next Monday's a holiday.

So we won't have to worry about it for two more weeks.