Too early to bed, too early to rise

My husband goes to bed earlier than my friend’s almost-three-year-old.  He’s got a good excuse for it. He likes to start his day early so he can get home by dinner and spend what precious time he has in his busy schedule with my son and me.

Trouble is, the evenings are my awake time.  My time to read, write, chat, shop online, and relax. Without these precious evening hours, I would have no knowledge of who won Project Runway what happened in the news and no time to read my favorite blogs. Oh yeah, as you probably are aware, I have no time for that anyway.  

So when he climbs the stairs at 8:45 and I’m just digging into my e-mail, I feel that pang of guilt. I don’t want to go back to the days of our abusive blogging relationship, but I can’t bear to turn it in at 9 pm just when I’m Tivo’ing Lipstick Jungle for the first time.  I have so much to do so late at night.

Of course, there are benefits to going to bed at the same time most eight-year-olds do.  I sit in bed for an hour and read the juicy gossip in Vanity Fair, or finish a crossword puzzle.  Hell, sometimes I even fall right asleep. But most of the time, I sit at the edge of my bed checking to see if that little red light on the BlackBerry is flashing me with a new message.  It seems to taunt me, “why, oh why are you under the covers already when there is a new Google Alerts in bold on my screen?”

Inevitably, under that red light hypnosis, I emerge from my warm bed and plod down the hall to go on the computer. One hour and some very red and tired eyes later, I crawl back into bed where my husband’s been snoring for an hour. I’ve accomplished little and the quality time we’ve spent together amounts to a few grunts good night, a couple page turns of a boring book and a crash of the head to our new and fancy Tempurpedic pillows. (Side note: do NOT waste your time on down pillows people! Hmm… maybe that’s why he’s getting into bed so early.)

In my ideal world, our night would involve two hours of TV watching/ computer checking (of course I’d get to pick what’s on the tube) and then at the reasonable getting ready time of 9:30 we’d go upstairs, TOGETHER, and hit the hay when the double digits appear on the clock.

Then again, I don’t actually have to get up and go to work the next day. 
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On that note, I’ll be MIA for the next few days visiting a non-blog friend’s new baby! Wish me luck on a 3 hour drive with toddler in tow. By myself.