It’s now 6:15 AM, and this means, for the third day in a row, I’ve been awake for two hours or more. The good news is, according to my sleep app on my watch, that I got 6½ hours of solid sleep last night – which is only 1½ hours less than what I got the previous two nights combined. The solid sleep was also an improvement, given that those same two previous nights included numerous instances of waking up and needing a few minutes to get back to sleep. Alas, these improvements only occurred because I was out by 9:15 and aided by a standard adult dose of generic Benedryl. Tonight, I’ll try to go to bed later, and see if I can get a good night’s sleep without help. If it doesn’t work as hoped, back comes the Benedryl tomorrow night.

Given that this is Sally’s and my vacation week, I was hoping to be able to get much more regular and solid sleep. Alas, the implications of the elections are exactly the kind of thing that my sleep-impaired brain latches onto when I wake up in the middle of the night. Under the best of circumstances, my brain is capable of latching onto the most ridiculous and nonsensical of things that, when returning to bed after needing to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, can ultimately result in not falling asleep again for anywhere between 30 minutes and two hours. Since the election, waking up for any reason after 3:00 AM and recalling any of the realistic nightmares being enabled by the return of the Der Katzengropenführer just means I’m up for the day.

Something will have to give on that front eventually. I don’t want to become dependent on sleep aids to get a good night’s sleep, and regularly waking up for the day between 3:00-4:00 AM is not feasible. For now, I’m just going to do my best to enjoy and make the best use of my awake time on vacation – there’s still plenty on our to do list we’d like to accomplish before needing to return home – and if the need and opportunity for afternoon naps arises, I’ll absolutely make use of them.