On Sleep and Devices Run Amok

 LUCY BURDETTE: I should preface this by reminding/telling you that I am a terrible sleeper. Anything wakes me up and I have a devil of a time returning to sleep. A couple of weeks ago, John’s watch erupted in the night. OMG, what awful emergency had happened? The watch reported: “Your activity ring is almost closed. A ten-minute brisk walk would finish the job.”

This is 2 am people! I don’t know about you, but getting a message about taking a brisk walk at 2 AM does not seem like a worthy emergency to me. We had a few words to make sure he had turned the alerts off and I struggled back to sleep. 

Not long after, the watch piped up again. “Now would be a good time to unwind. Sit in a comfortable position that’s relaxing. Close your eyes if that’s comfortable. Find something close to you. Notice the little details.”

There was something close to him all right—me—but noticing the details of my outrage wasn’t going to help him unwind!

I think we’ve sorted that out and he’s made sure that nighttime conversation with his watch is off-limits. Do you have a watch or other device that you rely on, that sometimes runs amok? How are you sleeping?

HALLIE EPHRON: That’s crazy–and the device doesn’t  even have a sense of humor. 

Lucy, I feel for you. Sleep is so crucial. Sometimes I have a terrible time getting back to sleep, watching the minutes tick by from 2 … to 3… to 4. And I canNOT ignore a phone ping. After having had my credit card number stolen several times, I have my bank account set to alert me whenever the card is charged, and if I forget to turn off the ringer overnight, then those pings wake me up. Why, oh why, does the Washington Post need to charge my credit card at three in the morning??

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, poor you, Lucy. I have trouble getting to sleep, but once out I'm not all that prone to waking up again. HOWEVER, Rick gets text messages, usually from the weather service, and sometimes from friends who don't seem to realize that texts are not emails… But since I'm deaf in one ear, I try to sleep on the GOOD ear and that gives me my own personal noise-canceling device.

JENN McKINLAY: I don’t own a watch and we keep our cell phones out of the bedroom. And, honestly, I’m a champion sleeper. Once I shut my eyes I’m out for 6-7 hours and can sleep through anything. When the Hooligans were teenagers, they threw late night pool parties. I had NO IDEA until a neighbor mentioned it. Ha! Those scamps. If I do get woken up, I can shut my eyes and go right back to sleep. I don’t dream, either. I’m a weirdo, I know.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN; Oh my golly, I remember when I first got my new phone, before the pandemic, I was in a hotel room, one of those times where plane is at 6 AM, which means you have to get up at 4 AM, and the whole thing is terrible, so I went to sleep really early, like 830. I t was ridiculous, and I must’ve gotten ten million billion texts. And they all pinged. Everything pinged. Once or twice I can handle, but ping, ping, ping ping ping ping ping--argh,you can’t believe it.

I almost threw the phone across the room.  Problem was, I had not learned how to silence all the notifications without silencing the alarm. Is there even a way to do that?  But I’ve got to tell you, tossing the phone out the window would’ve happened had there been a window that opened. I was awake, anyway, and zombied to the airport.

When Jonathan takes his hearing aids out, he can’t hear his own phone ping during the night, but I certainly do. I guess the good news is I can always instantly go back to sleep after I wake up for that sort of thing. It’s annoying, but isn’t life-changing.  (I guess my brain says, oh, that’s okay, and goes back to sleep.)

Also, my husband always forgets to take his pills, so I have alarms set everywhere to remind him.  I also set an alarm to remind him after he ignored the first reminder. The alarm is at 9 PM .

We usually have dinner around nine, too. So every night at nine, the microwave beeps, the sous vide beeps, the oven timer beeps, the Alexa beeps with the reminder, and then Alexa beeps again with the reminder about the reminder. 

Plus, the Alexa  does not listen to me. Does not respond to my voice when I say “Alexa stop!”  So, in addition to all the pings and alarms,  there’s also me yelling. It’s quite the moment. 

RHYS BOWEN:  I’m a really light sleeper. This comes after four kids woke as babies, then had bad dreams, then came in late as teenagers. John can creep across the room and I’m awake. And find it hard to get back to sleep. I’ve started turning off my phone because every political candidate in the world texts me at night. So annoying.

If I fall asleep at the perfect time I sleep well. If I watch a movie until eleven my brain is wide awake again. If I wake in the middle of the night my brain immediately kicks into full creative mode: that scene you just wrote … how about if the dialog went like this….. and I dream all the time. Vivid, interesting dreams. Rarely nightmares these days…

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Lucy, I had the same thing happen when I first got my Fitbit - evidently it was refurbished in Hawai'i because it kept giving me messages based on "my time" of GMT -10! When I finally figured out the app and fixed it, I was so releived. I thought I was doomed to 3am exercise notices forever.

I put my phone on sleep mode, with exceptions for my kids, so a call from one of them will break through. I'm actually sleeping better thanks to an electronic device: the Alexa Dot in my bedroom plays ambient noise all night long. It's sooo soothing to fall asleep to Train or Spacedeck or Wind in Trees - and it masks the sound of commuters zipping past my house starting at 5:30am each morning.

How are you sleeping in your homes Red friends? Any devices causing problems?

The Big Switch

DEBORAH CROMBIE: It's that time of year again--and I don't mean March Madness. We're already a day into the dreaded spring SPRING FORWARD . Who wants to lose an hour of sleep? Maybe it's not so bad for writers--most of us can let our body clocks adjust gradually over a few days (or weeks…) But for people who have to be at work on time, this first Monday on Daylight Savings Time is the pits. Every year there are record heart attacks and car accidents because people are tired and stressed.

 

If I were the boss of the world (a fine thing!) I would say LEAVE THE CLOCKS ALONE! But then the question is do you leave them on Standard Time or on DST? I would vote one hundred percent for Standard Time. I get that folks in more northern climes might like an extra hour of daylight in summer evenings, I really do. I've lived in Scotland, where mid-winter daylight maxes out at about five hours. But here in Texas that extra hour of summer daylight is HELL. DST is supposed to save electricity, apparently, but for us it means we use more as the hottest part of the day extends into home-from-work and dinner hour and our air-conditioners are working overtime. Want to grill? Or walk the dog? Or do anything outside that doesn't involve a pool? Wait until the sun goes down at 8:30!

Maybe we should split the US horizontally, where everyone above Kansas goes on DST, and everyone below stays on Standard Time. What do you think, REDS? And are you YAY or NAY on DST?

LUCY BURDETTE: No no I don’t want DST in either location! I vote for leaving it the way the world or God made it. I know this sounds silly, but the time switch ruins our sunset cocktails:). We like having a drink or glass of wine before dinner, and then moving on to dinner when the sun sets. Don’t tell me I have to wait to eat until 7:30--it’s not in my make-up. But if I was in Connecticut all winter with such an early end to the day, I might feel differently!

JENN McKINLAY: I live in AZ where we abstain from Daylight Savings Time. We don’t change the clocks because an extra hour of sun on a 115 degree summer day would be cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t really see the point of changing the clocks, but I live here so…

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: OMG. Just tell me what time it is. And leave it that way.  It’s  hard enough to figure out what time it is, even what day it is, every single day. The whole time zone thing, not to mention changing the times, makes my brain just fall to shattering pieces.

I will tell my favorite time change story. I was an anchor person in Atlanta, and one Saturday night on the news, the weather person said: “And remember,  Hank, tonight is the night the time changes.” 

I said in reply—on live TV—: “Well, Alan, the TIME doesn’t change. The time is an unalterable continuum . We just change what we call it.”

He said: “Huh?”

I said: “Alan, see, the time continues, and it’s not about us, it’s about the universe. The time stays the same.  We just change the clocks.” 

Next Monday, I got called into my boss’s office, and he yelled at me. “What were you talking about?”  he asked. I tried to explain (so dumb of me) but he interrupted – – “Don’t say stuff like that on TV,” he said. 

 

RHYS BOWEN:  having homes in Arizona and California is always complicated. Half the year different and half the same. In Arizona I’m always worrying whether it’s two hours or three to New York. Am I Zooming California at the right time?

But I love long light evenings. Sitting out on our balcony at nine or ten, watching lights come on in the valley is magical 

However like Hank I have a story. Book tour. We drove from Kentucky to Cincinnati. South to North . I showered. John went to run errands. Days before cell phones. I came out of the shower to hear the TV announcer say “ And that’s all from the six o’clock news “

You mean five I said. I called the front desk. Oh damn. We’d crossed a time zone! No way of contacting John happily pooling around in the car. I called a taxi, called the bookstore to apologize. Finally John showed up to be met at the gate by a madwoman yelling “Drive! Drive!”

The bookstore was nice enough to offer everyone coffee while they waited 

 

HALLIE EPHRON: There was a big article in our local paper urging legislators to pass a bill that would keep Massachusetts on daylight saving. Apparently the bill has been kicking around for years. Why couldn’t we split the difference and spring ahead a half hour and leave it there permanently? I’ll wait for Hank to explain why it can’t be done by halves on time’s unalterable continuum. 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I’m still laughing at Hank’s boss. “Don’t say stuff like that on TV.”

I wasn’t so fussed about the change Sunday morning as I have been in the past, because we haven’t resumed in-person church services, so I’m not in a sleepy panic about being late. Or is it early? It also helps a lot that I don’t have kids in school at home. Hauling teenagers out of bed is hard enough as it is, the fact that 6am was 5am two days ago doesn’t make the experience better. 

 

All I can say is the Maine Millennial has decided if she runs for national office, it’s going to be on the platform of 1) tax the rich and 2) abolish Daylight Savings Time. That’s it, her entire appeal. She figures she can get a majority of voters from all parties, since “springing forward” is so universally reviled.

 

DEBS: Julia, can I vote in Maine?? And Hank, you are a treasure!!

 

So how about it, dearest readers? Do you love that extra hour? Oh, but wait, we just LOST an hour...