Challenge!!!

Troy threw down a challenge last week that has rocked my world. I'm a night owl big time. If left to my own devises I would be up until 1am or 2am every night. In fact at about 8pm I usually get my second wind for the day and start to perk up, it's really quite unfortunate. It's right about the time that he winds down for bed time. I also sleep like the dead. It usually takes me about 30 seconds to fall asleep. It doesn't matter if I go to bed a 10pm or at 1am, head hits pillow and I'm sawing logs. I sleep deeply and soundly most the time and I tend to have a very hard time waking up.

When I wake up in the morning, whether at 7am or at 11am, I'm grumpy. I'm sloggy, quiet, don't like to talk, and feel like I am traveling through mud. I also don't drink coffee or anything caffeinated in the morning so I just have to wait for my stupor to wear off. As the training picks up, this process tends to lengthen. Drag drag drag, then then by 9:30am or so I'm usually rocking' and rollin'.

So, we are walking through Best Buy last weekend and I see one of those ZEO sleep monitors. Oooohhhhh, me likely, me want!

Again, I'm going to reiterate here that I am a junky for data items like this. I think at some point I'm going to need to go back to college to study physiology.

Zeo Inc. was originally started by a group of sleep-deprived students at Brown University.  Looking for a way to fight grogginess and perform at a higher level during the day, they learned that the stage of sleep from which a person awakens has a huge influence on how that person feels in the morning.  So, they developed a comfortable way to track sleep and help people wake up "on the right side of the bed."

Needless to say I wanted to buy one right then. That's where Troy stepped in and put the smack down. No way Sonja, why do you need that?.... he said as he slipped a new ginormous iMac into our cart. Seriously?

So I used my female ways of persuasion to say "If I go to sleep before 9pm for a week will you get me a Zeo"? Yes, we've been married for 10 years...

He said "1 month".

I knew I had him then...."two weeks?"

"Okay, two weeks". He thought he had this in the bag. So he thought.

Upon arriving home I immediately made a sticker chart. These sorts of things are best executed with a well thought out intermediate reward system. Case in point:

Let me tell you, this is probably one of the harder things I have ever endured and I have a new appreciation for those who have trouble sleeping. The first few nights were fine. Then there was a hiccup and I needed to take a call that would extend past the 9pm barrier. That night I had to use my true female persuasion for that damn sticker. But then after that night, back to the plan. And here's what I found.

First off...in 7 days I slept 66.5 hours. That's a lot of sleep!!!

I could not get to sleep later in the week. Wednesday and Thursday nights it took me over an hour to get to sleep despite the fact that I had trained a lot those days. I was rested and just laid there and tossed and turned for an hour before sleep found me. Then I woke up about 10 times each night and was AWAKE, but forced myself to count back to sleep. That's something my mom taught me when I was little, she would tell me to count to go to sleep. Thursday night I told Troy "I just hit 109" I usually don't make it past 12. He was a little pissed, I think because I woke him up, and he said "just go buy the damn Zeo". Hahahha! I know how to break him!

Last night I almost didn't make it. I shut the lights off right at 8:59. Troy comes in, and I say "Shhhhh, I'M SLEEPING" and then erupt into giggles. But, a magical thing happened. I was out in 15 seconds  and I woke up naturally 10.5 hours later without waking up a single time. 7:30 this morning I was fresh as a daisy and felt so alive.

So, next week will be interesting. I'm not holding Troy to his resignation of the bet. I want to see this one through. But it is OH SO HARD to turn off all the lights at 8:59 when I am in the middle of a really good chapter in IronWar and I'm not tired, and I just WANT TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT. Ha!

I'm not even going to tell you what I have to do if I lose the bet, because honestly, the probability that I will lose this bet is ZERO. Take that Troy!

(Troy snickers in the background knowing that by getting me in bed by 9pm every night means he has already won)

So, does anyone have the Zeo, have you played with it, what do you think? Also, does anyone have advise on the differences between the Zeo with the little clock or the one with the iPhone instead? I'm excited to learn more about sleep and about what kind of sleeper I am.