Not Ready for Central Time

Dearest Rachel –

Setting aside that he’s dealing with the cold that he caught on the last day or so of the trip (which I may very well catch soon enough, and is why, despite it being Thursday, we won’t be over at the folks’ place for dinner this evening. Dad is getting more and more susceptible to such things as he ages and his immune system wears out. For now, he’s perfectly healthy for his age, but they understandably don’t want to take chances anymore), it looks like Daniel will be able to reacclimatize himself to life back at home before I will.

When we got home last night, we did spend some time together having an ‘early’ dinner (at what our bodies would have considered to be half past midnight or so, but which was only some time between four and five p.m.) and catching up on the many videos that our favorite YouTube channels had put out in our absence, but once Logan returned home from shopping and a few other errands after work, the boys hung out together, while I called it a night before seven. Again, this would have felt like three a.m. to me – and after a day in which I’d been up since just after midnight, with but a few short catnaps on the plane – but if I’m trying to reaccustom myself to the current environment, I probably should have pushed myself to stay up longer. Certainly, if you were still around, that would’ve been a lot easier.

However, without a companion to keep me awake for… various reasons… I saw no point in pushing myself any further. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t called an early lid to a given night before when the boys were hanging out with each other in the family room, and I certainly had more reason to do so today than most.

Of course, there are consequences to such choices, and it didn’t surprise me to open my eyes to stygian darkness. Not only did I expect to wake up at an early time in accordance with my bedtime, we’re that much further north than Israel; take everything I’ve told you about the limited amount of available daylight, and shave at least another half hour off of either side, be it morning or evening. Darkness was inevitable.

What did surprise me was the fact that it was barely after midnight here; not a time worth actually rising and beginning one’s day. Indeed, I could hear Daniel still knocking about his part of the house (and coughing frequently, which might explain why he was still up in the first place). I didn’t need to get involved with that. To be sure, this would have been a little after eight or so back in Israel, which means that I was effectively already starting to sleep in, but I would need to roll back over and get some more sleep, whether I wanted to or not, as there was nothing to do here, whether in the house (where I needed to set an example to Daniel by suggesting that he call it a night, assuming his cough would allow him to) or outside, where everything had long since closed down, and wouldn’t reopen for hours.

On the other hand, this mean that I might be able to get out to the gym right when it opened for once, without dithering about whether my body was ready or not. And while that turned out not to be the case (it stuck me that I should let you know about all this, and that takes a little time to properly arrange my thoughts, even after a couple of hours lying in bed, trying to figure out whether and how to drift back off to sleep after such an early rising), I was up soon enough that I could get out there in the thick of things, rather than start so late that I wouldn’t get to the ‘office’ until ten or eleven this morning.

On an additional interesting note, for all that I may have indulged in seconds (and thirds, when you count the platefuls of desserts served at the various hotels) at the buffet tables, it would seem that I actually managed to maintain a steady weight on this trip. While I was a pound heavier this morning than when I weighted myself on the morning we flew out, that was a single pound’s difference; that’s practically a rounding error. Moreover, after putting in the hour-plus on the treadmill that I haven’t in nearly two whole weeks, I’m actually back below the two-twenty line again, despite all the eating and none of the the exercise taken in that time. Then again, it is a Mediterranean diet of sorts, and we got in our steps most days (although we averaged below the prescribed ten thousand per, thanks to spending a lot of time on planes and buses.

All that, and I’ve still got an hour before I’d like to get to the ‘office’ and catch up on a few things. I may not be ready for Central Time yet, but getting back to Atlantic Time should be sufficient – even perhaps ideal – for the time being. It might grind your gears to deal with, but let’s face it, you won’t have to. All I ask is that you take the opportunity now and them to keep an eye on me, and wish me luck going forward, as I’ll be needing it.