Sleep

 After 62 years of sleeping, I kind of know my sleep patterns. I sleep in 90 minute cycles and I need at least 5 of them every night. I try to structure my bed time so that my alarm goes off at the end of a sleep cycle. I find that I wake up easier then. When I'm off and the alarm goes off in the middle of a sleep cycle, I can be groggy and sleepy all day. So I really do know my sleep patterns and I know how to get the most out of them. But the dogs don't know them. 

This morning I woke up at ~2:45. I thought to myself, this is perfect, I have 90 minutes until my alarm goes off, back to sleep. But Bella was awake. Licking. Shuffling around on the floor. Making all kinds of noise. I was afraid she was going to get up and finally around 3am she did. When she gets up she goes to drink water and then goes outside to potty. This can take 15 minutes. So she got up and headed to the water bowl. After that, I opened the back door and she headed outside. I grabbed my blanket, wrapped up in it and laid on the couch. I didn't want to wake up fully. After a few minutes, I don't hear her  breathing anymore, so I go look and she's laying on the patio. That's it, I'm off to bed. Around 15 minutes later I hear her in the house, so I get up to close the door and bring her into the bedroom, that's another story. I tell her to settle down and I climb back into bed. Now it's almost 3:30. I'm laying there listening to Hubby snore and Lola snore. Bella is scratching around in the bed. Mavy is quiet, thankfully. I'm thinking I will not get anymore sleep tonight and it's probably time to just get up. At which time I promptly fell asleep and the next thing I know my alarm is going off. So that means I did not get my full sleep cycle in. There is a real possibility that I will be tired and dragging all day. Sometimes knowing these things is not good.