Go to bed earlier

It's always the first to go. Exercise, friends, social life stay on the list...it's sleep that I sacrifice. My list of resolutions is short (and includes the even-more mundane 'go to one yoga class a week'), and this is at the top. Sleep needs to win the daily rock-paper-scissors more often. I'd like to say it's because I want to save energy...and I guess it is - my own!

I need to work a bit tonight, but it looks like we'll make it to bed on target for the 4th time this week.

I've been part of the BC hydro conservation initiative and as part of this I get an hourly look at my power consumption. Their intent was to get people to switch away from peak hour usage by charging more for power between 4 and 9 pm. Unfortunately that's when we're home and we've had only marginal success with time shifting. But one of the side effects of this program was that I saw how much power we're consuming at 11pm, 12pm and even 1am. This really led to me questioning "What are we doing up so late with the TV on, the computer on and so many lights blazing?'

Tonight is my first night of success. The kids are in bed on time and solidly asleep, and the last task I have to do is finish this blog and then I can turn it all off until tomorrow. Wish me luck. Good night!

We had it all worked out on Saturday evening, we took the kids out for the day to get them all tired out and then the plan was to do out taxes (we don't have very complicated taxes) and get to bed by 11. Right on plan,  the kids fell asleep in the car on the way home, and they stayed asleep. Perfect!

But then 9pm rolled around, we were fully into the closing moments of our taxes and kid #1 woke up well rested and ready to play. Fair enough, the taxes became a one person job. And we took turns feeding then coercing child #1 back to bed. Finally they were asleep at 11pm. And immediately child #2 wakes up, hungry and well rested.

Garbage pickup at our house is at 7:30am and I have trouble reliably getting up early to put out the garbage. But I also want to set the garbage out as late as possible to avoid various local scavengers trying to get into it (mostly skunks and racoons this time of year). So I don't typically do this till after midnight. Perhaps if I can get the early nights working then mornings won't be s