Boy Wonder - in charge of bedtime

For some reason, I have always been really bad at going to bed, perhaps because I always had a bedtime when I was living with my parents due to their inability to sleep if someone is so much as considering consciousness elsewhere in the house. When I first moved out, the fact that I lived in one room meant that my bed was my main piece of furniture so it wasn't so noticeable that I would often fall asleep on top of the covers having drifted off whilst intending to be otherwise occupied. Since living with the Boy Wonder, I would estimate that around 80% of the time we have 'headed up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire' has been at his suggestion - I will quite happily lie around on the sofa, even to the point of falling asleep rather than actually committing to going to bed.

It's not as though our bedtime routine is particularly gruelling - we have a fish and a rabbit to feed, one door to lock and some lights to switch off. We aren't exactly neat freaks, so it's not like we do anything in the way of cleaning or tidying, but for some reason the idea of choosing to go to bed is completely alien to me - despite being 30, I still feel like one of those kids on 'You've Been Framed' who ends up falling asleep in their spaghetti hoops in spite of their attempts to stave off the overwhelming tiredness. I'm not sure whether it's come about because the Boy Wonder generally has no problem going to sleep, whereas I used to spend hours in bed staring at the ceiling and wondering whether I would make it out alive in the event of a fire (one of the weirder fears I had a child after a not-particularly graphic safety lecture at school). I still have a propensity to let my imagination run wild whenever I can't sleep, which may be why the concept of going to bed fills me with a childish determination to stave it off for as long as possible.

Stupidly enough, this applies even when I'm really tired - I can spend all day planning an early night, wishing I was in bed and looking forward to a nap, but when it actually comes down to going to bed, I will still find ways to put it off. I used to be surprised at how my productivity levels increased at the most inappropriate times, namely when it was getting late and bedtime was looming, but as I become more aware of the fact that I have slight issues surrounding going to bed I realised that this is just another way to put off the inevitable.

I also really like being in bed - once the decision is made, the jobs are done and the wooden hill has been breached, I have no problem with actually going to bed - it's just the instigation of the process which I find unpalatable and when left on my own I just don't do it. I will either sleep on the sofa, start doing jobs in the bedroom so that the decision is never made or just stay awake until the whole thing becomes moot at some point the next day.

My worry is that at some point, should our mid-term future go to plan, I will be in charge of our children's bedtimes, which in some senses should be fine (I don't care if other people want to go to bed, I just don't want to myself) but I do worry that one of our kids might be like me and when they tell me that they don't want to I will feel like a huge hypocrite. Fingers crossed then that they will take after the Boy Wonder and will be thrilled at the idea of going to bed, when and wherever the urge may strike him, otherwise our kids are going to end up watching a lot of weird films of the kind that are shown at 4 in the morning and probably scar toddlers for life.

Super Glue

In spite of (or subconsciously perhaps because of) the explicit and terrifying warnings on the outside of a tube of Super Glue, and in spite of the fact that I am independently aware that Super Glue was originally designed and used for gluing skin together, for some reason whenever I actually use Super Glue I managed to glue my fingers together. Admittedly, often I am gluing something which requires me to hold the two pieces together until the glue has at least begun to set, so it's not entirely surprising that it happens, but the fact that I consistently forget to check whether my fingers are becoming a part of the item that I am trying to fix is a cause of some consternation to me. Fortunately, I now have proper fingerprints again after last week's attempt to fix the stupid freezer drawers left me with suspiciously smooth patches on several of my fingertips...