Made in Reykjavik: February 2013

There's this problem I have. Well, It's not really a problem, it's just the way I am, I suppose. I can't sleep in. I've never been able to. Not the way most people I know can. I can sleep past an alarm, and some mornings I am not very enthusiastic to wake up, but that lasts a few minutes and then I am wide awake and there is no getting back to dreamland. I know some people (and sleep next to one every night) who would love nothing more than to sleep until noon everyday. Left to his own devices, Tumi's circadian rhythm would sink to going to sleep at 3am and waking up at noon, no problem. Our modern world is situated more around my schedule. I get sleepy and crabby after 10:30 and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:45 or so.

I think this quark of mine is weird, and it is certainly weird in Iceland; a country that seems to be full to bursting with night owls. If you want an other-worldly experience, take a walk through downtown Reykjavik on Sunday morning at 9am. It is like a ghost town with confused tourists in hiking boots and matching parkas holding maps and trying to find an open coffee shop or something to do. My early-bird tendencies have led to some embarrassing social situations. People like to come over to our house for a visit (which is lovely) but they sometimes come over at an hour that would be unthinkable in Americaland. I have no recollection of house guests after 9pm when I was a kid. You didn't even call after 8:30. In Iceland, we have guests until 11 or midnight on a weeknight. It makes me feel like a boring, crabby 80 year old, and I do the worst possible thing a hostess can ever do and say "So nice to see you and catch up, but I have to sleep now, so goodnight!" to my lovely friends. I go to bed and leave Tumi to hang out with our guests. I like to think that they don't care, and that they've come to understand that this is just the way I am and I can't help it. Nobody comes over when I'm at my peak at 8am!

It is strange to think about how a person can be totally set in their ways at a very early age, but not really notice it until reflecting years later. I've always wanted to be an outgoing person. I've always imagined it would be so much fun to party and go to concerts and stay up all night and drink and have fun. Doesn't that all sound just wonderful? But I can't do it. I just don't have it in me, I think. I can count on one hand the number of times in my entire life I have been up past 4am (not tending to a baby). I have a vivid memory of life as an 18 year-old sorority girl in the U District on a Friday night. I had just made myself a hot herbal tea and was in my coziest PJs telling my beautiful sorority sisters to have fun and call me if they needed someone to come and walk them home. What a lame-ass. I was 18! I haven't changed. It just ain't my style, I guess.

This feeling of waking up and knowing you will not be able to sleep again has popped into my head in more life situations recently....It occurs to me that once you know something, or realize it to be true, you are awake to a new fact that you know you won't be able to un-know. Shaping your understanding of life, reality, your own place in existence, is a series of these small awakenings that makes us all who we are. For instance, I live in Iceland. I am often homesick an day dream about what life could be like if I were to move my family back to the Pacific Northwest. It is fun to imagine Elsa wearing shorts in the hot summer sun, or to picture Finnur running around in a big yard with a dog (we always have a big labrador in my American daydreams). And my loving parents, brothers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and everyone I love who has been so important to me in shaping the person I am and the way I see the world; my kids could get to know all those wonderful and amazing people! If we're being honest, I daydream about an adult life in which I can smoke pot for fun, cuz it's legal now. I imagine the warm summertime and camping and hiking and big trees and my kids exploring tide pools in the San Juans.

But somehow I always wake up from my daydream because of the facts of everyday life in Iceland versus the US. Once I wake up to the practicalities of life here in Iceland, I simply can't honestly imagine moving back to the US. Health care accessibility, vacation from work, the playschool system, my 15 minute-walk commute, free (almost) University education, my 80% work schedule...Maybe someday it will feel right to leave this place, but not now. I'm awake, and there's no going back to sleep.

And now for cute kid pictures.

Two kids getting all cozy for our stroll!