I have things to do!


I do! Lots! Yesterday I was working on a paper, writing up a script for a video, and fussing over spiders, and I still have a couple of term papers to finish grading. I started to fade in the mid-afternoon, though, and was feeling exhausted, because I haven’t been sleeping well, waking up way too early. So last night I programmed our lights to dim at 9:30, went to bed promptly at 10, and went right to sleep. I had also programmed the lights to come up gradually at 6:30, and wake me gently by 7. I was determined to get a good night’s sleep and break this cycle.

Unfortunately, I had not planned on the behavior of the two large mammalian organisms I share the house with, one of whom started eating crackers crunchily in bed and checking their phone at sometime around 5am, and the other started snuggling up to my neck and purring at about the same time. I won’t say which was which, to protect the guilty.

So no, I didn’t get my good night’s sleep.

I’m so tired right now I might just go stretch out on the sofa and spend the day in a lazy haze of stupid television. Or maybe go the other way and take a long walk in the cold, although there’s no place to go on a Sunday (everything is closed) in Morris. Oh, I know! I’ll sit dazed and stupidly incapable of making up my mind all day long!

Comments

  1. hemidactylus says

    Have you ever tried valerian? It seems to calm me down, but smells like wet dog fur. I bought some GABA chewables. Maybe placebo effect as the active ingredient isn’t known to cross the blood brain barrier. I tend to awake around 4-4:30 am and get some reading and exercise in before starting my day. This in itself tends to have me ready to sleep before 10 pm, but GABA/valerian and some potassium rich coconut water at least subjectively help when needed.

    I think Adam Ruins Everything went after sleep myths, as in needing 8 hours continuous. Getting up around 2 am shouldn’t be abnormal but we are conditioned into rigid scheduling regimes, perhaps a product of Taylorism.

    https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/blog/adams-sources/adam-ruins-everything-sleep.html

    https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/11/you-dont-need-eight-straight-hours-of-sleep-you-need-three-extra-hours-in-the-day.html

  2. robro says

    Churches are opened today, PZ, even in Morris. Bet you could get a little nap there although the seating usually isn’t very comfortable. Still, it’s been known to happen. Personally I would avoid TV as there’s too much on it to rile one’s soul…even worse than cracker crunching and purring mammals at 5am.

  3. blf says

    The mildly deranged penguin calculates that sleeping from about 9.30 to about 6.30 is either about three hours or about nine hours, assuming no missing days & classical Newtonian space-time, and depending on the direction of time’s flow. With these unclarities and uncertainties, she asserts, it’s no wonder poopyhead is unsure about their sheep. Or sleep, if they count them. (In some cases, the jumpers count how many sleepers they try to jump, but this has not caught on and remains a rarity.)

    To eliminate some of this imprecision, she suggests placing at least one of the others into orbit by launching from a trebuchet, locking oneself in the combined cheese and vin cellars, and as a precaution, spraying eau damn pois on the doors, drains, vents, windows, chimneys, brick walls, rat / mouse holes, and nearby volcanoes. Some sources suggest also using piles and heaps of flamethrower-charred horses, but opinion is divided, as it rather assumes the Evil Equine Empire can take a hint.

    Of course, being locked inside the cheees & vin cellars, one has no choice but to verify and ensure the cheese & vin is of the proper standard… this is said to help with sleep, mostly when one is finished “sampling” the cheese & vin and there is not much else to do, except perhaps swat at the flying yellow horses ridden by spider knights in sniny zebrafishy disguise.

  4. says

    The year coming is going to be one where dazed is the rational response. Or someplace between dazed, unconscious, or blind rage. Just say you are practicing.

  5. nomdeplume says

    Have you definitely made a decision to “sit dazed and stupidly incapable of making up my mind all day long!”? I think you should vacillate some more before making up your mind not to make up your mind…

  6. unclefrogy says

    @6
    I concur that is my usual practice of late some times I even continue the vacillation well into the task I end up starting.
    uncle frogy

  7. says

    If he’s interested in sleep, he should be very glad that the large mammal in the entry preceding this one isn’t there. That variety just keeps getting larger all the time, eventually eating all of the food in the house. The neighborhood. And then demands the car keys.