I'm right on track for this weight loss goal. Counting my points and halfway through the piercing headache phase that always precedes me cutting down to mere mortal sized proportions. Counting points and cutting down on quantities has already made a difference, about 1 kg, but I'm waiting until I get to the gym scale to make my "official" weighs. The little bathroom scale we use (underneath the cabinet by the front door of the house) rocks back and forth, so it's +/- 5 kg.

Now, this part is something familiar. I know what I'm doing, I just have to concentrate on it and I'll succeed. What I'm having trouble with something else: sleeping. It is something that Jeff Duntemann talked about a few times and something I completely and utterly agree. The problem is, I have so much trouble going to sleep. I want to work every waking hour even when I know sleeping at least eight hours would make a major difference.

Take last night for example. I planned to go to bed at 21:30. While Fluffy was resting (she's still sick), I worked on cleaning up the MG illustrations and putting them into the document. 1461 pixels by 2085 pixels, 300 dpi. It was steady work, but it takes time. It doesn't help that I kind of fell in love with my novel again. It isn't perfect, but damn it, it was good enough to get published and it was the first time I actually succeeded at this writing thing. It ended up taking close to three hours to finish and I didn't get to bed until 23:30. Fluffy wasn't going to work today, so my normal limiter of her calling me to bed... well, commanding me to bed most nights, didn't really happen so I just worked until I was exhausted. I know I need more sleep, that part is obvious from how eyes hurt and how much I sleep in during the weekends. Its one of those things I never get enough. Reducing food for six weeks, pretty easy. Going to be an hour early, damn near impossible.

We also encountered another problem. The guest room. Before a few months ago, we never had a cleaned-off bed unless I cleaned my office and took my papers off of it. So, we only unburied the bed for guests. Now, we have a formal guest room. And this is causing a little bit of trouble. When I'm sick, I snore. When Fluffy is sick, she can't stand snoring more than her normal hatred of it. Sadly, its a fact of life. Normally, she pokes me in the middle of the night, I get up, roll over, and usually go back to sleep within five minutes. On the days I was sick, it would be a constant thing because I snored so often and in every position, she would just keep poking me as I tried to find some place to not make noise. Now, we have the guest room. After the third poke or so, I just wander over there and crash there. When I take NyQuil, I just sleep there because I know I'm going to be snoring loudly and I'd like a restful sleep.

It's the first step for sleeping in separate bedrooms, I think. We don't share blankets, haven't done that in ten years. I got the pink ones, she gets the blue. She also sleeps with 5-8 blankets and I use 1. So, that step of a new room isn't that far off. There are also days when I find her on the couch, usually because of snoring or she can't get comfortable. Her mother and grandmother both sleep on the couch, or spend most of the night on the couch, then head to the bed at four in the morning.

Last night, it came to a head. I think she was afraid of me moving into the guest room for good. I won't, but we had a long discussion of poking and blanket avalanches. I'll try to flee a little bit less to the guest room and she'll try to poke me a bit less.

And maybe I'll get a bit more sleep.