REVENGE OF THE WORM... otherwise entitled: Owl... or fowl?

I was a fowl...

For most of my life my habit had been to go to bed at the same time every night, and read for a while, then turn the light off and sleep, and get up nice and early.

Naturally this doesn't include my 'wild days' as a young club goer with no responsibilities...

But apart from that, it was pretty much a life long habit.  I would always have around 3 books on the go at once, and would get through a couple a week.  Spare time not spent drawing or crafting was spent reading... 

How much I read in bed depended on how tired I was, sometimes I would only read a paragraph before things got blurry, words began running together, or I'd realise that I had just read the same passage 3 times with no idea what it was about.  Other nights I could knock over several chapters.

When I had DS & DD the habit continued, and I was always up at sparrow fart to get them ready for school etc.

But when I met BM, that lifelong habit went out the window.  You see BM is a shift worker.  His shifts are 12 hours long and have a pattern that on the face of it, isn't a pattern, but you get used to it.  Sort of...

When he's on day shift, he can be in bed by 8.30pm  and, as he will be up by around 4am the next day, I was reluctant to read in bed for fear of disturbing his sleep.  Well it's not actual  fear, I don't want  to disturb his sleep.

When he's on night shift, he leaves at about 6pm and returns about 7.30am the following day.  So in theory, I could read on those nights couldn't I?  In theory, yes, I could, and for a while I did.  But what I found was happening, was that when BM had day shift, I wasn't able to get to sleep at all - because I hadn't been reading.

It turned out that having a life long sleep routine turned into a part time sleep routine just wasn't working.  So I began staying up and watching TV, movies, playing on the computer, until I was so exhausted that I would quite literally stumble to bed and collapse into it from sheer exhaustion.  Then still have to get up at 6ish to get DS & DD off to school.  This has gone on now for over 9 years.

And now I'm an owl...

Just how late do  I go to bed these days?  Well my regular 10.30pm every night without fail bedtime, has become this:  Midnight is early, 1am is usual, and more recently has been an absolutely ridiculous 3am!  

Luckily for me, DS & DD are grown now in fact DD is grown & flown, and no longer need me to get them up.  Which is great, because I have enough trouble dragging myself out of bed in the mornings now.  I average between 5 and 7 hours of completely crappy sleep every night.

Research has shown that a good sleep habit is essential to weight loss...  I'm screwed...

Which brings us to Mish's challenge - Owl or Fowl?

Can I do it?  

Can  I turn myself back into a fowl?

Or am I destined to live out my days as a reluctant owl?

We'll find out in 14 days!