Screwed up Sleep Cycle

I've always been a night person -- just don't like calling it quits at the end of the day.  Even if I'm physically tired, I'll go to bed and just lay there thinking about things that I want to do or things that I should have done or whatever.  Now, though, my body is completely confused.  During that phase of working days and nights, I'd fall into bed exhausted and sleep for 14 or 16 hours straight.  Now, I only work nights once in a while and it's pretty physical labor.  I try to stay up when I get home with the idea of going to bed that evening to get back on track; doesn't work though.  I fall into bed when I get home and sleep for all or part of the day.  Then, it's difficult to sleep that night.  I've fallen into a bad habit of relying on caffeine to help me, and it's really interfering with the sleep process.

For instance, I worked Saturday night after not getting much sleep during the week in Rice Lake and spending part of the day bowling at Ian's party.  When I got home Sunday morning, then, I was pretty tired and went to bed right away and slept 'til half-time of the Packer game.  Back to bed, then, 'til that evening when I got back up again for a few hours.  Back to sleep for the night until about 10 a.m. Monday morning when I got up finally feeling totally ready to get some work done.  My Christmas decorations had to come down!  So, I tackled that job and it took all day and well into the evening, during which time I drank 3 cans of diet Coke (partly because of a sore throat and that helped).  Tried to go to sleep with no success so I read my book, took a warm bath and, finally, at 4 a.m. managed to go to sleep.  However, not surprisingly, I slept until 11 a.m. this morning, then.

Now, it's getting close to midnight and I've been trying since 9:30 to go to sleep since I'm driving to Rice Lake tomorrow.  No luck despite the fact that my eyes feel like they've been sandpapered -- just can't shut off the brain.  Fortunately, I don't work at Kohl's again until Saturday, the 29th so maybe I'll get back to some regularity by then although I'm not hopeful because I'm a night person and I just hate to let go of the day!