I admire people who are slaves to routine. I really do. Up at 5am, morning jog, at their desk at 8:30am, blah blah blah fall into bed and fast asleep by 9:30. I suppose I have a routine, but it drifts like a fourth-grader’s attempts to sing on key.

Monday: Up before 6am. Work out. At desk by 7am, brief look at headlines. Work until 7pm.

Tuesday: Up around 6am. At desk by 6:30am, read some news articles, break for workout or walk mid-day. Work until 7pm.

Wednesday: Up around 6:30. At desk by 7am, read some news articles and maybe a couple on Salon. Work until 6pm.

Thursday: Up around 7am. At desk at 7:30am, spend an hour or so reading news articles and the comments on Cary Tennis’s latest column on Salon and watching videos people have posted on facebook. End day at 3:45 for allergy shot, dinner and movie with Mom.

Friday: Up around 8:15am, twiddle away an hour or so reading news and making a blog post.

Weekend: Whenever. Whatever. Work a few hours to make up for hours lost to migraines and allergy shots during the week.

Reboot.

Migraine is one of the hazards that throws a wrench into any routine. “Oh, you thought your were going to get up and run this morning? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Take 4 ibuprofen, 2 valerian root, and when your husband gets out of bed and hour and a half from now, ask him to make you a pot of full-caffeine coffee and bring you a cup. And if that doesn’t work either, take a triptan and go back to bed until 10.” That’s good for one or two days a month.

Another is that my natural sleep cycle seems to be 9 hours asleep, 20 hours awake, or at least something not in sync with a 24-hour clock. Even when I do succeed in getting up at 5am, I’m still wide awake until 11pm or later. So after a few days of that, the perkiness I felt on Monday morning fizzles until I can pay back the sleep debt.

I also have it on good authority from my husband that my sleeping sounds like an asthmatic dragon doing the breast stroke. So one of the joys in my future is a night at the Sleep Lab. Since an ex-boyfriend, a sleep researcher at Stanford, once speculated that I was “delta-deprived”, perhaps it’s time to find out if he was right. I wonder if they’ll read me a bedtime story?

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