One of the casualties of my supercharged, overwrought July was the very expensive treadmill I bought earlier this year. Or rather, my neglect of the treadmill was the tragedy. The treadmill is just fine, but I’ve tended to skip more and more days as the work thing got more intense. And now it’s almost become a habit to give myself a pass on the treadmill any morning I don’t feel quite up to it.

That covers a lot of mornings, since I’m such a long way from catching up on sleep. Today for some reason I woke up at what I would consider an early hour, although most people would think differently. But most people weren’t still awake at three in the morning, either. Early lasts a long, long time for my people, we who suffer from Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. (I’m so glad there’s a name for it, and the treatments range from melatonin to cannabis. I’ve tried one; maybe I should give the other a shot.)

Something messed with my circadian rhythm and woke me up earlier than early today. And that led to a sluggish day when I kept falling asleep with my Kindle in my lap (and I don’t actually blame the new Joyce Carol Oates book for that, but it could have been a factor), or in front of the TV showing the rain-soaked race track in Montreal (and I’m not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to race in the rain, since the drivers couldn’t see where they were going and the cars couldn’t stay on the track).

Anyway: frequent short naps were the order of the day. They didn’t help much, and I’d really like to sleep a little later into the earliness tomorrow.

But I do want to get up early enough tomorrow to spend some time on the treadmill, since I didn’t manage to get on it at all today. The dilemma is that when I don’t get enough sleep, I turn into a cranky old coot who can’t walk through a doorway without stumbling into it. It’s on days like that when it’s a good thing I live alone. (Let’s face it: it’s almost always a good thing, for the good of society.)