Bedtime Note:
After Dinner
7 June 2019
¶ I am giving some thought to enjoying the hours after dinner a little better than I do.
In the old days — until very late last year — I gave no thought to the matter at all. As soon as I had cleaned up after dinner, I simply refilled my wine glass for the umpteenth time and went back to whatever I was reading. Going to bed was would take care of itself.
Now that there is no after-dinner wine glass, I am balancing the desire to collapse into a chair against the prudence of getting ready for bed ahead of time: brushing the teeth, hanging up the clothes, taking the shower, putting on the nightclothes. There is one more thing that I must do before going to bed: I must fill the water bottle with ice. In the old days, I filled the water bottle with ice right before I turned out the lights, or, in other words, right after I stopped drinking for the night. It has taken me four or five months fully and completely to recognize that this signal moment no longer occurs. Now I want to go to bed with the water-bottle business behind me, not a lingering condition-precedent.
Eleven o’clock is a good time for some, or perhaps all, of these things to happen. But it’s likely that I will quickly tire of the “obligation” to do the water-bottle thing the moment I’m in my sleepies. The only thing that’s clear is that the water bottle comes second, after the shower &c.
This is only Part I of the Bedtime Reform Act. Part II will concern the drinking of tea — just how late in the afternoon, that is, to permit it. I find that the diuretic effect of tea takes about five hours to kick in. And then, if I have drunk a lot of tea, I’m in the bathroom every fifteen minutes in a maddening round that I can only hope will be over by midnight. This is only partly an effect of ageing. I have always suffered, so to speak, for drinking too much tea.
Not to mention water bottles.