Lost Sleep Can Never Be Replaced

So we (except the freaks in Arizona) collectively lost an hour over the weekend.

I can do without an hour, no problem. A single hour is replaced during my half-asleep commute between home and work. But like everything else (Diet Coke, Star Wars action figures, old computer parts and cats for example) I've got issues stopping with one of anything.

I end up thinking "I feel fine" and "I'm not so old that missing a single stupid hour of sleep will make me feel like I've been dragged behind a horse" and "I see this as a personal challenge to my masculinity so I will do something extra stupid and man-like to compensate".

On Saturday night Gwynyth had a friend sleep over. And when I use the term "sleep over" I'm not referring to an activity either girl seems to have participated in. I stayed up with them longer than I'm normally awake, yet they lulled me into a false sense of security before getting up in the night to do whatever it is little girls do late at night in the near-absolute silence of a darkened house. I think it involved the Disney channel.

Both were miserable in the morning on Sunday and I mocked them for their poor choice as only a parent can mock.

"That was a pretty horrible decision and now you are tired and sad and I'm not as tired or as sad because I eventually went to sleep instead of staying up to watch That's So Raven. And eat your vegetables or you'll get rickets."

So Sunday night Gwynyth fell asleep pretty early, of course. She had staggered around for most of the day and I just felt bad for her.

I logged in to play World of Warcraft. Since I recently rejoined my old guild, it was nice to be invited along on a 10-person dungeon crawl. We had a great time dashing through the place. And dashing and dashing and dashing. While dashing. We'd kill stuff and laugh and die horribly and laugh harder.

And I looked over at the clock from time to time. That's why I find it odd that I eventually looked over and noticed with genuine surprise that it was about 2am on Monday morning.

Oh, dear.

So the alarm clock went off less than four hours later and I turned it off before the first early morning honking buzz noise was complete.

And then the backup cellphone alarm started playing Material Girl in the other room, ramping up the volume over time. It played the whole song this morning. 

I was not late for work, but I'm still trying to completely regain consciousness.

Staying up until 2:30am was a pretty poor decision on my part, but I at least plan to have some vegetables later to avoid the whole rickets thing.

Speaking of sad nutrition, I've entered over six thousand Diet Coke Reward points and I still have a substantial stockpile to input at the limit of ten codes per day.

I no longer remember what it feels like to not have to pee.