I like to think I’m fun to be around.  But really only until about 9:00 p.m.

Tonight, we went out to dinner with some new friends – a few families with their kids.  We finished at the restaurant around 8:00, and everyone else went back to one house so the kids could play and the adults could hang out.  We, on the other hand, came home so we could get a tired 8-year-old to bed at a reasonable time, to do our best to not start off the weekend with a sleep deficit.

This is really nothing new for me, or my family.  In college, I was one of the few people I knew who could actually manage an 8:00 a.m. class (mostly because by 11:00, I’d be knocking on my neighbor’s dorm room door, asking her to turn down her music).  Back then, on most Sunday mornings, no matter how late I’d been out on Saturday, I’d be up by 9:00, doing laundry and hoping that someone else would wake up so I’d have somebody to accompany me to the dining hall for brunch before I crumpled in a heap on the laundry room floor.

With a few late-night exceptions, my life has continued along happily this way.  I was able to find myself a great guy who also doesn’t love late nights (When we celebrated our 15th anniversary last year, a friend chalked the success of our marriage up to the fact that we are both often asleep by 10:00).  And I guess some of this is genetic, because our kids are just like us.  When Matthew was a baby, we tried our best to keep him on what I think now was a pretty complicated sleep schedule, because if we veered off course by more than about 30 minutes in either direction, it could get ugly.  Switching the clocks for daylight savings time was a nightmare.  Both kids have gotten a lot more flexible as they’ve gotten older, but usually, we all would still would rather go to bed early.

As I’ve grown into adulthood, I’ve realized that I just came this way, and that’s okay with me; I consider it part of my charm.  I can take the jokes from friends and have learned to laugh at myself.  But please don’t call me after 9.