You sleep on the same side of the bed every night, right?

Yeah...I'm with Jeff on this.

(Our monthly Blog Rerun series continues today with this post from August 18, 2021. For the record, Terry and I are still sleeping on the sides of the bed we chose when we got married 33 years ago...)

I guess it happened on our honeymoon in 1992, but at some point, Terry and I settled on which sides of the bed we would occupy for the rest of eternity.

From the point of view of someone standing at the foot of the bed (creepily staring at us as we sleep), you will always, always, always see me on the left side and Terry on the right.

Was there a reason for this? Or did it just kind of happen?

I don't know. You could argue it should be the other way around, since this arrangement puts our non-dominant hands nearest our respective night stands (Terry's left, my right). Not that it's a problem to roll over a little so we can use our preferred hands to grab our phones or whatever, but I can't remember if there was a reason we settled into our permanent sides of the bed.

NOTE: This is assuming we're both on our backs. I start on my stomach and end up on my back, so I guess it's not a problem at the beginning of the night and turns into one by the time I wake up.

Interestingly, when I travel for work and find myself alone in, say, a king-size bed, I sleep way over on my normal side. The other side remains untouched, as if I'm expecting Terry to show up in the middle of the night and just slip in beside me.

Most of us are intractable creatures of habit, to the point that it's uncomfortable for us to do certain things in our lives any other way.

I could sleep on what I consider to be Terry's side of the bed, but it would feel weird.

I could also vary the order in which I wash myself when showering, but again, weird.

Granted, to keep your brain sharp as you get older, it's a good thing to vary routines and challenge yourself every day. But I guarantee I will be sleeping on the same side of the bed and making my breakfast the same way until the day I'm 6 feet under.

Some things may not be worth changing.

I'm thinking of taking up a new hobby: Napping

From early December through mid-February, I worked five days a week from home while my company's headquarters building underwent some long-overdue renovations.

I wrote here about the ups and downs of that experience. For me, someone who normally goes into the office every day regardless of company policy, it was mostly about the downs. I generally found myself too distracted to be as productive as I am when in the office.

But there was one thing I did enjoy about working from my upstairs office every day, and that was the opportunity to take 10- or 15 minute power naps.

I haven't been much of a napper since I was 3 years old, but I've come to appreciate the value of an occasional mid-afternoon snooze.

More than once during my extended work-from-home experience, I would walk away from my laptop and go straight into our spare room, where I would lay down on the bed and catch a little shuteye.

Invariably I would wake up refreshed and go right back to working, feeling much better for having grabbed those 40 winks.

I don't generally get enough sleep in the first place, especially on days when I go to the gym. If I get more than 7 hours in a given night, that's a rare treat.

The result is occasional mid-day fatigue that is best remedied with a nap.

The problem is that I don't usually want to nap, even when my body needs it. Being a task-driven, goal-oriented individual, I'm more about getting things done than I am about sleeping. Given the choice, I would rather knock something off my to-do list than nap.

But sometimes the temptation is too great, and like I said, I now understand the pleasures of a quick 2pm doze to energize myself for the rest of the work day.

Now that I'm back in the office full time, though, it simply doesn't happen like it did before. At least not on weekdays.

Thus, I'm going to make playing the saxophone and napping my official weekend hobbies.

Eventually I hope to get good enough to do both at the same time.

I forego a comfortable sleeping position so that our cat Molly can slumber peacefully on our bed

 

Having grown up a dog owner, I find cats to be very quirky. Or at least the ones we have are.

Take our kitty Molly, also known as "Fat Molly," "Floofy Molly," "Fat Floofy," or any number of other names that describe her two defining physical characteristics:

• She is somewhat obese.
• She is also a longhaired feline, with an emphasis on "long."

Molly is, like the cat in the stock photo above, colored black and white. But she's much larger than the cat pictured there, which means she tends to take up a considerable amount of room wherever she decides to park herself.

This is a significant fact for me, because as it turns out, Molly often likes to sleep near me.

What happens is that Terry and I will get into bed and spend a few minutes scrolling on our phones before turning out the light (which I realize you're not supposed to do, but I never seem to have much trouble falling asleep). Molly will often jump onto the bed and plop herself right on top of me as we do this.

She will then proceed to knead my belly with her front paws while suckling the bedspread, as if she were a kitten nursing from her mother.

We got Molly when she was very small, and the assumption has always been that she was separated from her mom much too early and has thus carried mommy issues with her to this day.

Anyway, getting to one of Molly's quirks, once we turn out the light, she will immediately jump from the bed and leave the room. I don't know why she does this, but at some point during the night she usually returns and jumps back onto my side of the bed.

Terry says she often wakes up in the middle of the night and sees me with my legs hanging off the side of the bed so as not to disturb Molly, who is sleeping where my feet would normally be.

I don't do this consciously, but apparently it's important to me that any cat who wants to sleep on or next to me not be disturbed.

Which is fine except for the fact that it diminishes the quality of my own sleep somewhat. I would very likely sleep better if I kept my legs under the covers with my body straight, rather than curled almost in an "L" shape because God forbid I nudge Molly and she leaves.

That cat really should appreciate everything I do for her, which includes not only accommodating her preferred sleeping spot but also giving her fresh food and water every day and cleaning up the litter boxes after her. Then there are the pets I give her throughout the day along with occasional tasty food scraps from the dinner table.

She loves me, I know, but I'll be honest and say I still don't think Ms. Chonks is being sufficiently grateful for all of this.

Sleeping in until 6:00am is suddenly one of my favorite parts of the week

I know a few people will read that headline and ask, "Since when is 6:00am sleeping in?"

And you're right. For most, a 6:00am wake-up time isn't exactly an indulgence.

But I am, and for most of my life have been, an early riser. Not because I've had to do it for work or anything, but mostly because I love getting a head start on the day.

Since I began going to the gym five mornings a week, I've been getting out of bed around 4:45am. I like to make it to Ohio Sports & Fitness just ahead of what I call The 5:30 Crew, which is a small but dedicated contingent of fellow pre-dawn exercisers.

Whenever I have a session with my trainer Kirk, I stay in bed until 5:15, since he and I don't meet up until 6:00am anyway.

But on those two rest days a week, I get lazy and sleep all the way until the big hand on the clock points straight up and the little hand points straight down.

Scandalous!

I could probably stay in bed even longer, but my body is always ready and raring to go by 6:00. Plus I really have to pee by that point, so there's no use fighting it.

Still, I can't tell you how much I enjoy those "sleep-in" days. I always feel like I've earned them after three or four days in a row of early gym-going, then scrambling to come home, shower, change and head to the office for a full day of work.

I should point out that in order to get a decent amount of rest, I'll sometimes ingest a couple of 5mg melatonin gummies the night before. I recently blogged about how I need to have my wife in the room in order to fall asleep, but the gummies have changed that situation drastically.

Now I rarely even notice when she comes to bed, that's how deeply asleep I am.

Interestingly – and don't ask me why I remember the exact date, I just do – I got almost no sleep 28 years ago last night because I was so worried about starting a new job the next day at a company called Self-Funded Plans. That sort of anxiety-induced insomnia used to hit me several times a year.

But these days? Never. My heads hits the pillow, and within a couple of minutes I'm out.

I wake up when it's technically still night time, of course, but there's always those 6:00am sleep-in days to make me feel like I'm living a life of luxury.

Learning to go to bed on my own

For 32 years, I have been sleeping next to my wife.

When we were first married, we had a queen-sized bed, which meant we were fairly close to each other every night.

Then, when we moved into our current home in 2003, we bought a king-sized bed, which afforded us acres and acres of personal space in which to stretch out as we dozed off.

But we still went to bed at the same time, even if it meant we were no longer right next to each other.

This is the point, though, where Terry and I differ. If she is tired, she can climb into that bed by herself and fall more or less immediately to sleep.

I, on the other hand, have a really hard time falling asleep if she's not there.

More specifically, if I know she's in the living room watching TV, I will lay there with my eyes wide open until she comes into the room and turns in for the night.

I cannot, for whatever reason, easily get to sleep unless she's there.

This generally hasn't been a problem except when I need to get up early the next day, and therefore need to get to bed early the previous evening.

An early wake-up time for me is 5am. That's when I get up on days I work out at the gym, and it requires me to fall asleep at or before 10pm the previous night if I'm going to get enough rest.

Terry prefers to go to bed somewhat later than 10 o'clock (sometimes later than 11 o'clock), which leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum.

Either I learn to fall asleep without her there, or I drag my way tired and sleep-deprived through the next day.

So far, try as I might, "tired and sleep-deprived" appears to be winning.

I can't explain why I need to have my wife there if I'm going to sleep. I just do, and the harder I try to overcome it, the worse it is.

Rather than forcing Terry to turn in well before she's ready, I'm thinking what I need is a life-sized Terry robot next to me in the bed. It will be programmed to kiss me goodnight, then turn over and go to sleep like Terry does.

I would also like it to say "Yes, honey, of course you're right" in response to anything I say, but maybe that's asking too much.

I need to quit whining, go to bed earlier, and regularly lift heavy things

"The problem is we have a problem. It's not that we don't know what the problems are; we've known those for years. It's not that we don't know what the solutions are; we've known those for years. The problem is we haven't done anything about it." - Former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

I usually do this in the caption, but there's so much going on with the photo above that I had to address it in the main body of today's post.

I prompted the AI Blog Post Image Generator with "sleepy guy lifting weights." After several attempts even worse than this, I settled on the image at the top of your screen. I'm fascinated by (a) the bar running through the narrow end of the weight plate and on to...I don't know, another machine?; (b) the situation with the guy's right arm; (c) the condition of his right eye.

Why, you might logically ask, do I continually use such an inferior generative AI tool? The answer is a combination of it being free and my inability to look away from some of the images it creates. I can't stop going back to it.

Anyway, the quote above from Frank Jackson is famous here in Northeast Ohio. People make fun of it, but it perfectly encapsulates what I know to be true about my personal health – and what you may know to be true about your own health.

I am not unaware of the areas in which I fall short when it comes to taking care of myself. I do many things well in the bodily maintenance department, but there are areas in which I miss the mark badly.

Specifically, I don't get enough sleep and I don't strength train.

These are both bad things if you're looking to live a long and vibrant life.

Like Mayor Jackson, my problem is that there's a problem. And I've known for a long time what the problem is. And I've known exactly how to fix that problem.

The problem is that I choose to do nothing about it.

My quality of sleep is good, but the quantity of it is not. I don't like sleeping as much as most other people do. It is, to me, a necessary evil at best.

It's also a key ingredient to peak mental and physical performance. We have to sleep, and we have to get enough sleep. Most nights I get around 6 hours, sometimes less.

I fall asleep almost right away when we turn out the lights, but I also wake up earlier than I probably should. I almost never get the recommended 7 to 9 hours.

I should choose to go to bed earlier, but I do not.

I have also, for many years, chosen not to engage in the practice of lifting weights. My exercise focus has been on cardio activities, and for good reason. A healthy heart is vital.

But so is muscle mass and overall strength, much of which you lose after the age of 35 or so.

I am well past the age of 35.

The dilemma I face is that while I love getting outside and running/walking in the mornings, I do not love the act of lifting weights.

I do not even like the act of lifting weights. I find it as tedious and unenjoyable as I find running/walking to be uplifting and fun.

But as with many things in life, there is an element of "too bad, so sad" in play here. My choice is either to suck it up and start going to bed earlier so I can get up and lift some weights in the basement a few times a week, or to continue complaining about all of this.

I know what I should do. And I think, as I write this on April 9, I'm going to start doing it soon.

Really, I will. Or, by the time you read this, maybe I already have.

First, though, I should probably hire Frank Jackson as a consultant to help me better understand the problem.

You only get so many chances to sleep next to your favorite person

I have a troubling relationship with sleep.

It's not that I don't sleep well. I generally fall asleep quickly and stay asleep all night. The actual sleeping part isn't the problem.

It's more my attitude toward sleep. I know the majority of  people love sleep. They embrace it. They relish sleeping in, hitting the snooze button, and staying warm and comfortable under the covers.

Not me. I see sleep as more of a necessary evil, even an annoyance sometimes. I enjoy being busy and doing things. Sleep gets in the way of that, and while I know my body and brain need to rest and recharge, there are nights when I crawl into bed and can't wait until 5:30am rolls around and my feet hit the floor again.

There is, however, one aspect of going to sleep I love. It's sliding under the covers in the evening and seeing my wife there next to me. It's a feeling of comfort and blessing that almost defies description.

Lately I've become more aware of the fact that this arrangement will not continue indefinitely. I don't mean to be morbid, but the reality is that at some point, one of us won't be there to get into bed anymore.

This is a terrible thing to be thinking about at this point in my life, especially when you realize it's highly likely both of us will be around for many, many more years to come.

But that doesn't change the inescapable fact that the number of times I get to kiss my wife goodnight and turn out the light is not infinite.

The sensible reaction to this – and the attitude I take, happily – is to be grateful for the opportunity now rather than dread the day it goes away.

I am thankful for many, many things in my life, but maybe none more than lying there in the dark, looking to my left and seeing Terry there. It makes me feel safe, secure, happy and blessed. It's the one thing that leads me to think, "OK, maybe these next 7 hours aren't ones that will be wasted in inactivity, but rather spent next to one of the greatest blessings I'll ever receive."

I still can't wait to get going again the next morning, but if you have to sleep, you might as well do it next to someone you love.

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

Sleep-wise, having pets can be worse than having babies

Our first two children, Elissa and Chloe, began sleeping through the night within a week of coming home from the hospital.

Jared, our #3, took a few months.

Melanie, the next in line, honestly took a good year and a half.

Jack, the youngest, was somewhat less than that but still gave us troubles.

I've often said that, had this all happened in reverse order and the first two were problem sleepers, there would not have been five Tennant kids. You would right now be reading a blog titled "Two Kids and That's It."

Those days are long in the past, of course, but I'm still often awakened at times when I would rather not be awakened.

Nowadays, the culprits are our five cats. And really, it's mostly Fred.

Fred is ready to wake up and eat any time after 4:30am. I'm an early riser, but he tends to start bothering me during that delicious half-hour before I get up when the bed feels warm and comfortable and you doze so peacefully.

This bothering takes the form of questioning meows, followed by Fred positioning his face literally within three inches of mine (as if to say, "hey, you awake?")

This is always followed by Fred placing a front paw on my cheek. It would almost be sweet if it wasn't so annoying.

I will usually roll away or swat his paw from my face to indicate my disagreement with Fred's position that it is, in fact, time to start the day. But at that point it's really no use. There's no way I'm going back to sleep, so after five minutes of just laying there to show Fred who's boss (though he clearly knows the truth), I roll out of bed and proceed to feed the cats, scoop their litter boxes, sweep up around said boxes, etc.

All things considered, I think I would prefer going back to the babies-in-the-house phase of our life.

"Sleeping in" for me is now 6:00 AM

I have almost always been an early riser.

When I was in 3rd grade, my mom was still making me go to bed at 9:00 PM even though I usually needed no more than 7-8 hours of sleep. So it was common for me to be wide awake by 4:30 in the morning, just looking for something to do in my room until it was time to get ready for school.

Often I would listen to the old WWWE 1100AM radio station, which back then featured music on its overnight show (something that may have been unusual for an AM station even then). The hosts were local, and I would sometimes call in to request a song.

Having this little 8- or 9-year-old kid calling to request a song in what was essentially still the middle of the night for most people must have been hilarious, but they usually humored me...as long as the song I requested fit their mostly mellow format.

One time I asked for "Rock Around the Clock." It was the first song I could think of. The DJ, whose name I believe was Vicky, laughed and told me she couldn't play that one, but she would play the theme from "The Goodbye Girl" and dedicate it to me.

And she did! All 17 people listening at the time heard it.

Anyway, other than a stretch during my teen years when I would stay in bed until nearly noon on the weekends, I've continued my early-rising ways for decades. On the mornings when I exercise, I'm awake before 5:00 AM.

On the days like today when I "sleep in," I roll my lazy bones out of bed at the advanced hour of 5:30 AM.

I am a wild man, I know.

You tend to need less sleep as you age. So if I'm like this at 51, I figure I'll be waking up around 3 in the morning by the time I hit my 70s.

No wonder old people want dinner at 4 in the afternoon.

5 things that must be true before I can fall asleep

(1) I must start out on my stomach, with my right hand under the pillow propping my head up just a bit. I inevitably end up on my back by the next morning, but I always start on my stomach.

(2) The room must of course be dark, but it also needs to be cool. Almost cold. If I feel the slightest bit hot, I throw the covers off (whereas my wife, upholding married couple stereotypes, will be freezing while I'm sweating).

(3) The kitchen must be cleaned up, including the dishes. This one gets violated from time to time, but generally speaking, I don't like going to bed knowing the sink is full of dishes. Terry has no problem with it, and I know she'll clean up in the morning if she promises to. But I like waking up to a clean kitchen so much that I'll usually just do it myself before bedtime.

(4) I must be in shorts. Going back to point #2, I don't like feeling hot (or even warm) when I get into bed, and long pajama pants unfortunately do that to me. So unless it's 10 below outside and our room is a literal refrigerator, I'm in shorts. And a t-shirt.

(5) Everyone in the house NEEDS TO SHUT UP. This is Phase 1 in my Inevitable Transition to Cranky Old Man. My children, assuming my wife and I are fast asleep and cannot hear a thing, make incredible amounts of noise in the kitchen and living room late at night (and our bedroom door opens right out onto both). BE QUIET, DO YOU HEAR ME? I GET UP BEFORE 5 IN THE MORNING AND YOU DON'T. DIDN'T I TEACH YOU SOME CONSIDERATION? QUIET!!

Sorry about the mini-rant. I'm going to bed now.

If I never had to sleep, this is what I would do

The biggest problem in my life is that I have to carve out time to sleep.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy sleeping. But honestly, sleep gets in the way of everything I want to do. I'm forever changing my exercise routine/life plan because I have limited time in the morning and therefore have to make compromises, and I can't decide sometimes which activities are worth keeping and which can be jettisoned.

But if you gave me a pill that made it so I didn't have to sleep, I'm pretty sure a typical night would go like this for me:

10:30 p.m. - Say good night to Terry because I won't give her any of my "No Sleep" pills, and therefore she has to go to bed. Besides, I think she likes sleeping too much to give it up.

10:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m. - I would watch a new movie or TV program every night. There are thousands of movies and TV shows on which I would love to catch up. Some are old, some are new. I'm assuming here I would never exhaust the available supply of new entertainment and that I wouldn't get bored of it.

12:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m. - Read for an hour. Anything, really. Just read. I never get to read. I love to read. I've loved to read since I was four years old.

1:30 a.m.-2:00 a.m. - Since I'm already doing the reading thing, I would get my daily Bible reading in here. I've been trying to get through the Bible start to finish this year for the first time since 2000, so I would set aside these 30 minutes to get my Bible on.

2:00-3:30 a.m. - Run 10 miles. I would do this every night if I could. Of course I would have to build back up to this level of stamina, but I love running in the dark and in the quiet. Running 70 miles a week takes a toll on the joints, though, so I might turn this into a walk sometimes...

3:30 a.m.-4:00 a.m. - After my run I would meditate for a half hour. Or maybe do tai chi or something.

4:00 a.m.-4:30 a.m. - Shower and dress.

4:30 a.m.-5:30 a.m. - I would read the Cleveland Plain Dealer, New York Times and Wall Street Journal back to back to back. I so wish I had more time for something beyond a cursory reading of the paper every day.

5:30 a.m.-5:45 a.m. - Feed the cats and clean their litter boxes. This is a chore that never goes away.

5:45 a.m.-6:30 a.m. - Listen to music. It might be a symphony, some bebop jazz, a succession of 80s tunes, an entire album from a favorite artist, whatever. Just listen to music and absorb it. That would be fun.

6:30 a.m.-7:00 a.m. - Eat breakfast and greet my poor family, who by this point will have wasted the whole night sleeping.

7:00 a.m. - Leave for work.

I'm telling you, that would be a series of awesome nights...

Do you get enough sleep? I don't think I do...

I love reading those magazine articles with headlines like, "The Five Things You Should Be Doing to Live a Healthy Lifestyle," or, "Are You Taking Care of Your Body? This Quiz Will Tell You!"

In most cases, these articles make me feel good because they almost universally advocate exactly what you would think they advocate: maintain a healthy weight, eat nutritious food, exercise, etc. And I do all of it.

All of it, that is, except the one thing that seems to be on every one of these lists: Get enough sleep.

I'm not alone in this, I know. Americans in general just don't sleep enough. We talk a lot about sleeping and how great it is. We just don't do enough of it.

In my case, it's a schedule thing. I have a lot to do, and admittedly a lot of it is stuff I choose to do. So I get up most days at 5 a.m.

If I'm going to get the recommended eight hours of sleep a night, that means I have to be in bed by 9 p.m. And that, I'm here to tell you, just ain't going to happen.

For one thing, I've been working a lot of long hours lately, and some nights I'm not home from work until 7:30 or 8 o'clock. By the time I eat dinner, spend some time with the kids, make my lunch for the next day, shower, etc., it's well past 9 p.m.

I'd say I average 6 to 6 1/2 hours most nights, and generally I feel pretty good. Tired in the afternoon sometimes, but generally fine.

They say people's sleep needs vary, and I can see that. Terry would never get by on 6 hours of sleep a night. She just wouldn't. That doesn't mean she isn't tough (she is). Her body just requires more sleep than mine does. It has always been this way.

I am almost invariably the first one up in our house in the morning. Seven-year-old Jack is often second. In this, I think, he takes after me.

When I was in elementary school, I needed hardly any sleep at all. I regularly woke up at 4:30 and spent the first couple of hours of every day in my room just passing the time reading and listening to the radio.

More than once, I called the overnight DJ on the old WWWE radio station in Cleveland to request a song because I was wide awake. One time she asked me my name and how old I was, and she laughed when I told her (I think I was 8 or 9 at the time).

She played our little conversation on the air and then dedicated a song me. I think it was the theme from "The Goodbye Girl," which I found strange. But hey, I was on the radio!

Even when I don't have to get up at any certain time in the morning, I rarely (rarely) can sleep a full 8 hours. At some point my body just says, "You know what? We're getting up. Let's do this." And so I get up and do this.

But what that kind of scheduling does for you in terms of productivity may be offset, I'm afraid, by an eventual deterioration in health. Like I said, I generally don't feel tired or run down, but when someone puts a numerical goal in front of me (like 8 hours of sleep) and I don't meet it, I feel like I must be failing somehow.

What's worse, they say you need less sleep as you age. By the time I'm 80, I'll be sleeping 2-3 hours a night, max. If you happen to be listening to the radio at 3 in the morning, I'll be the guy calling in to request a song...

The older I get, the earlier I wake up

My wife is philosophically opposed to the idea of, as she puts it, "getting up in the 5s." By which she means waking up before 6 a.m.

You might take from that that she would be OK with getting out of bed at, say, 4:30 a.m. And you would be wrong. Terry would no sooner get out of bed at that hour than she would eat blue cheese.

(Terry hates blue cheese, you see. I love it. Terry prepares the food in our house. Guess which ingredient you never see in our meals outside of the occasional rogue bottle of salad dressing?)

Anyway, Terry does not like to get up early, or at least what I consider early.

Most days, I'm out of bed at 5 a.m. Occasionally it's 4:50 a.m., and I don't need an alarm to do it. I just wake up, lay there for maybe a minute, and my feet hit the floor.

I realize there are many people for whom a wake-up time of 5 o'clock would be "sleeping in." These people generally fall into one of three categories:

(a) They deliver newspapers
(b) They have blue-collar jobs that require them to be at work at some unacceptable time like 5:30 a.m.
(c) They are 104 years old

That whole thing about needing less sleep as you age is true, right? I assume it is. How else do you explain the line of senior citizens at the buffet restaurants every day at 4 p.m.?

My sister Judi used to get up around 4 in the morning. She would use the early hours of the day to exercise, clean the house, and watch reruns of "Cops."

My family loves "Cops." It's a thing with us. There's something about seeing shirtless white people of Southern descent getting arrested that appeals to us.

Anyway, I get up fairly early only because I have to. If I'm not up by 5:00, there's no way I can do everything I have to do in the morning. That list, in order, includes:

- Get dressed for running
- Feed the cats
- Go downstairs and clean out the litter boxes and sweep around them
- Go outside and get the newspaper
- Get a drink of water
- Lace up my running shoes
- Go and run 2-3 miles depending on the day
- Stretch
- Come in and record the run in my running log book while getting a second drink of water
- Shower
- Dress
- Read the paper and eat breakfast
- Brush my teeth and head out the door for work

If I'm not out of bed by 5:15, something on that list is going to get sacrificed. And I don't want to sacrifice any of it.

Well, I would gladly sacrifice the cat-related items. But those have been my jobs for many years now, and I'm fairly certain no one else in the family is going to take them over. So I'll continue doing them.

During the summer I have the house all to myself in the morning because none of the kids have to get up for school, nor does Terry have to pack their lunches and see them off. My teenagers would, if given the opportunity, sleep until 3 p.m. every summer day.

We don't let them do this, of course. (Most of the time.)

As I type this, it's 9:20 in the evening, which means I'll be waking up in a little more than 7 1/2 hours. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and eat my nightly chunk of blue cheese and head off to Dreamland with the rest of the old people. Good night!