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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2014 14:24:52 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2014 16:40:01 GMT
With all the excitement around this new forum, I'm finding it difficult to go to sleep. I TOSS AND TURN WITH THOUGHTS OF NEW THREADS AND POSTS and I don't want to fall asleep at the computer. HELP! What an amazing time that was! Indeed it was. Thanks for the memory Kerouac.
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Post by htmb on Jan 10, 2015 19:55:27 GMT
Since at least last spring I have had a problem sleeping, both at night and during the day, but I may have figured out the cause. Most nights I have been going to sleep, only to find myself wide awake three to four hours later. At the same time, I was employing my iPad more and more. I was using it to check AnyPort, read news articles, post pictures, and play games. This past summer I also began using it to watch films and to read books that I would normally read in hard copy or on my old, non-back lit kindle. Being the sometimes dense person that I am, I only slightly connected the use of the iPad with my lack of sleep and basically tried to ignore the problem as it got worse and worse. Most nights, unless I took some sort of hateful medication, I was getting only three to five hours of totally interrupted sleep. At least six to seven work best for me. A couple of weeks ago I read an article with information about melatonin similar to this blurb from the Guardian: Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland at night and under conditions of darkness. It is a 'timing messenger,' signaling nighttime information throughout the body. Exposure to light at night, especially short-wavelength light, can slow or even cease melatonin production, interrupting sleep. www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2194806/Using-mobile-phones-tablets-bed-affecting-sleep-warn-scientists.html#ixzz3ORqgXZ14 Of course, I knew this, but had really ignored the infirmation. I decided to be more disciplined about the use of my tablet, and stop all use by 6:30 at night, giving me about three hours of "tablet free" time before going to sleep. The results have been amazing. I still wake up early, but I'm sleeping through the night most of the time, averaging about 7 hours. Naturally, it's made a major difference in how I feel. The one or two nights my recent sleep has been disturbed could be related to using the iPad later into the evening when I tried to cheat a bit.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 12, 2015 20:43:16 GMT
I read my kindle in bed at night...maybe I need to stop. My OH's sleeping habits have changed a lot since he had a heart attack in 2013. Now he wants to go to bed at 8pm or thereabouts. Then he's wide awake at 0400. He can't seem to break the cycle because by 8-9pm he's falling asleep...as you can imagine we don't have much of a social life! When I am on a late shift I don't get home until half past eight and I like to unwind before I go up, it causes a bit of bickering
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Post by Deleted on Jan 12, 2015 21:17:43 GMT
I have known a lot of people with that problem and it's very true that for those people, 8pm seems to be a more or less obligatory time to go to bed. In most cases, the family just lets them go to bed and goes on living as normal. But when it is your spouse, I can readily imagine that it is not really an acceptable solution.
When I had my mother living with me for a year while I frantically tried to find a nursing home, she would almost always announce around 8:30 pm that she wanted to go to bed. She was sleeping in the living room, so I would bed her down there while turning down the TV as low as possible as I sat at the computer in a corner of the room. Luckily, she is a great sleeper (so am I -- in fact I observe everything she does just so that I will know exactly how I will be in a few years, so the TV never bothered her). She would wake up quite a few times during the night to go pee -- or else because she had peed the bed -- but otherwise she always slept through the night and I was the person to wake her up for breakfast in the morning.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 13, 2015 19:01:27 GMT
My beloved is quite a light sleeper...so when I am doing my steam-train-piggy impression ( yes...I do snore...so does he)I occasionally wake him...he also complains if I go up to bed much later than him because I disturb his sleep....gggrrrr. To try to resolve this we converted the box-bedroom back into a proper bedroom and bought a nice comfy bed to go in there, the idea being that if one of us was keeping the other awake then there was a refuge Nobody has used it yet.... The box room was used before as a dressing room/dumping ground....so we had to do quite a lot of rejigging...lots of stuff went to charity shops.
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Post by htmb on Jan 13, 2015 19:13:59 GMT
Though most week nights I go to bed early, I've always been a night owl. My mother said it was as if I thought I'd miss out on something if I went to bed. When my children were young, and I was in school, I used to get my studying done in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep. Reading anything good will keep me awake, too. I'm guessing I'll eventually get back to staying up late regularly when I finally retire. Problem is, I also like getting up early.
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Post by rikita on Jan 14, 2015 11:54:59 GMT
yesterday at work, i twice almost fell asleep in the bathroom (where i went in the hope that walking there will wake me up a bit).
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 14, 2015 18:01:27 GMT
I'm on a night shift tonight..I start at 8pm and work right through to 8am. The hospital I'm at tonight is generally quite quiet blood transfusion wise, but I can always pop into Haematology and Biochemistry and help out in there. I am entitled to one half hour break altho I have to take the phones and bleep with me. In the 'good old days' unsocial hours were covered by on-call which was voluntary, we had the use of an on-call bedroom and only did urgent, emergency work....(and got the next day off to recover after much arguing with management...we originally only had 2 hours and were then expected to complete a full day..so in effect worked 36 hours) Under this system the hospital can give us shifts whenever they need us to, at any of the three sites. In the past 10 days I've worked an early shift (0800 - 1600), late shifts (1200 - 2000), a weekend day shift (0800 - 2000), a 'late-late' 1500 - 2300 shift and a night...there is no pattern and if you look at the rota it looks very random...makes it difficult to get into a routine at all. I work part time but can end up working 50+ hours in 4 days and the following week just have 8 hours...they usually end up owing me a lot of hours but at least atm they are trying to reduce the amount they owe me before the end of the financial year... 20 months, one week and one day till I retire
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2015 18:15:23 GMT
yesterday at work, i twice almost fell asleep in the bathroom (where i went in the hope that walking there will wake me up a bit). I used to do that! And believe me, there are millions of people who do the same thing.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2015 18:27:27 GMT
20 months, one week and one day till I retire Just about everybody starts counting the months/days in the last two years before retirement. My company opened its office in France just in 1974, and I started in 1978 so I was there quite a few years before the first people began to retire. But those were incredibly dismal events, because I was already dreaming of the day when I could stop working and it was at least 15 years in the future -- and the people leaving were so happy to go, because after 40 years of work, it is nice to stop. However, I finally got my turn to leave even though obviously the government had extended retirement age by then (just a tiny trifle in my case -- still a minimum of 40 years of work but eligibility at age 60 + 9 months for my year of birth). Anyway, now that I am free at last, one of the things that I enjoy the most is waking up super early -- often around 5:30 -- sometimes getting up, sometimes not, because I don't have to. I generally turn on the morning TV news & crap show and fall asleep again in front of it -- and then often take a nap in the afternoon, usually around 3 to 4 pm. It is so nice to finally be able to do things according to your own rhythm instead of times imposed by the rest of the world.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 14, 2015 18:58:41 GMT
During my working career I had no idea when I would retire, only that I wanted it to be as soon as possible. In 2001 the company I was working for went bust and were bought out. I was offered a job at the new place but declined it and thought bugger it, I'll retire right this minute. Since then I've worked a few things but nothing long term, more as something to get me out the house. As a result I ended up getting up early to get the kids ready for school, usually around 6.30am, and tried to avoid a snooze later as I couldn't then sleep when it was bed time. Since the kids are now all at school in Germany I get up when Mrs M gets up, 7.30am, and take her to work.
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Post by rikita on Jan 14, 2015 23:20:59 GMT
i wish i could retire asap - but i fear whenever i actually get to retirement age, pensions won't even exist anymore (or it will be impossible to live on them), and i will just have to keep working.
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Post by htmb on Jan 14, 2015 23:23:54 GMT
yesterday at work, i twice almost fell asleep in the bathroom (where i went in the hope that walking there will wake me up a bit). Since I missed out on a lot of sleep last night I made sure to stay out of the bathrooms at work today.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 14, 2015 23:49:20 GMT
i wish i could retire asap - but i fear whenever i actually get to retirement age, pensions won't even exist anymore (or it will be impossible to live on them), and i will just have to keep working. I have so many friends in your age group, or even 10 years older, and I always feel guilty to be so lucky, in the last group of people able to retire normally. The worst part is that I am receiving more than double the 'normal' retirement payments but I do not feel comfortable financially at all.
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Post by rikita on Jan 15, 2015 7:23:04 GMT
yeah well, i suppose i'll just have to put a lot of pressure on agnes and make her become a banker or something like that ...
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Post by mickthecactus on Jan 15, 2015 13:28:52 GMT
i wish i could retire asap - but i fear whenever i actually get to retirement age, pensions won't even exist anymore (or it will be impossible to live on them), and i will just have to keep working. That's me in a nutshell but fortunately I enjoy the work and the people I work with. Can't go on forever though.......
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 17:00:38 GMT
Good morning...er...afternoon..... not an awful night...just long. I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow this morning and I slept deeply for 3 hours...bliss. Now, after a nice hot shower I am wrapped up in my favourite pink-fleece, Snoopy PJs and stripy fleece socks ( a vision of loveliness of course) in front of the fire whilst the wind howls outside. I am hoping to stay in comfortably dozy state until bedtime. My beloved is cooking his signature dish...fried egg (sunny side up) and chips with bread and butter...numnum. I am still waiting on my pension forecast. I could well have to carry on working for many more years, but I'm hoping not to. My brother and older sisters all retired at 55 - 60. My brother has done quite a bit of relief teaching since he retired, one of my sister has taken a part time job in a supermarket, and another sister does a bit of secretarial work for a busy Vicar. I wondered why they carried on working when they didn't need to. One sister said that her (also retired) OH was driving her mad so she needs a bit of space, another sister is a widow and likes to fill up her days, and my brother has recently become a grandparent, my SiL looks after the 3 grandchildren a lot (a toddler and 2 newborn)....I think that he thought that when they retired HE would be the centre of his wife's attention
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 17:03:12 GMT
I could get used to this dozing by the fire in the afternoon on a winter's day....
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Post by htmb on Jan 15, 2015 17:10:29 GMT
I've worked shifts, but they were for a month at a time. I'd be very unsuccessful working the kind of exhausting schedule you described, Cheery.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 17:38:14 GMT
I would be OK with a week of lates and a week of earlies or core shifts...but I did 6 weeks of nights as a young woman when I was a student nurse and it was awful. You can get used to anything I suppose. Some of my colleagues elect to do permanent nights...they work 3 x 12 hour night shifts per week. I would rather follow my crazy schedule than subject myself to 3 nights every week. We have a small number of people covering 3 hospitals and tend to only have 2-4 night shifts per month because of the 5 people who are on nights all the time. It varies.
I shouldn't grumble (altho I invariably do) because the nights and weekends pay more and it will all go towards my final pension calculation.
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 15, 2015 18:12:40 GMT
I spent from 1976 to 1994 working shifts but nothing like cheerys. Mine just changed weekly. Even that was a killer. My father retired at 58 and worked shifts for thirty odd years, again with a weekly change, and retired from working down the coal mine as soon as my mother could reasonably force him to and they could survive financially. It still ended up me paying off their mortgage though but it was worth it to get my dad retired.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 18:17:05 GMT
It certainly plays havoc with your sleeping patterns and has unfortunate effects on the digestive system....Post-on-Call-Flatulence was a common complaint as most people only managed to stay awake by stuffing their faces. That's not a problem now as we can't eat in the lab and only get a 30 minute break. (honest)
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 18:22:56 GMT
There was also 'Post-on-call-shopping-syndrome'...in other words 'I've just worked all night so I'm going to go and spend the money I haven't got yet'
We sometimes get traders coming along to put on sales of clothing, shoes, jewelery, perfume etc in the hospital restaurant. After one particularly busy night (before the time that we were entitled to a day off to rest after an on-call) I remember buying some lime green leggings and a lime green tee-shirt with yellow spots...'This will look fabulous on my huge wobbly body' thought Cheery.....oh how wrong I was....Long shifts cause atrophy of the good-taste-hypocampus in the brain....
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2015 18:30:15 GMT
When I was a young lad, I worked for Avis for about a year at an agency open 7 days a week from 06:30 to midnight. We worked two days from 06:30 to 15:00 followed by two days from 15:00 to midnight, with 3 days off. But 3 days off is not really authentic when you finish at midnight one day and then have to start at 06:30 when your shift begins again. So many of the agencies with those hours (train stations, airports) reorganised the hours illegally and reversed the schedule: two days from 15:00 to midnight, followed by two days from 06:30 to 15:00. Obviously the illegal time was the central night where you finish at midnight and start at 06:30 the next morning -- and I had about 40 minutes in the metro to and from work. It was tough, but the "weekend" (which only actually fell on the weekend once every 7 weeks) was so much better. It was pretty shitty for social life, though, because we were almost never available for parties or dinners and when he had several days off, all of our friends were working.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 15, 2015 18:44:54 GMT
Blimey! that's harsh....I thought that I was hard done by if I have an 11pm finish followed by an 8am start...which doesn't happen often.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 15, 2015 19:13:32 GMT
Well, your establishment probably respects the law!
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Post by rikita on Jan 15, 2015 23:14:04 GMT
don't know what pattern my brother's shifts follow - but it might be a weekly pattern too - but for a while (at his old job, i think), they often did it that he had a late shift/night shift before his day off, and then a morning shift after his day off - which meant, his day off wasn't really a full day off. i am not sure it even was legal to do it like that, but then, a lot of employers seem to not always respect the law, as long as no one complains ...
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 16, 2015 12:15:08 GMT
Our managers have a tendency to give us a late shift followed by an early...which means that we are back at work within 12 hours. I think that legally they have to allow at least 11 hours between shifts. I sometimes volunteer to so a 24 hhour weekend shift to cover sickness...but only if I have access to an on-call bedroom. Even 10 minutes laying down with my feet up helps.
Altho my managers work Monday - Friday 0900 - 1700 with weekends and bank holidays off, I know that my new boss puts in more hours than that, she sometimes comes in on a weekend because she knows that she can work solidly without being disturbed. That she is willing to do that restores my confidence in management a bit...our last manger was out of the door at 3pm on a Friday and hardly ever showed his face out of office hours.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2015 12:26:40 GMT
It's the same in France: 11 hours minimum rest time.
I had to deal with endless reports when I was still working, because of course in the airline industry, when there are flight delays no matter what the reason, if there are just a limited number of employees, you have to go beyond the law. Every month at the employee relations meeting, I was supposed to approve (or not) every incident when the law was not respected. The employees themselves almost never complained, because they receive terrific overtime rates and compensatory time for this sort of thing.
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