Originally posted: 4/12/2010
I love naps. I hated them when I was little, because why would you want to sleep when you could be playing with your barbies or watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? As I grew older, I realized that naps are a precious commodity, especially if you live with other humans. When I sleep, I dream very vividly, and I always (ALWAYS is not an exaggeration here) remember my dreams when I wake up. The most awesome dreams are the ones where Johnny Depp is my boyfriend, or I dated Chandler Bing, or I live in an enormous apartment that's bigger than a house but it's still an apartment. I have some key players in my dreams and they continue to show up in subsequent dreams yet I have no idea why, these aren't people I see and/or talk to on a daily basis. They are actually people I have not seen nor spoken to in quite some time.
Anyway, my body's need for sleep far exceeds that of most humans. I don't function particularly well on less than 8 hours, and prefer to get 10-12. Someone pointed out that if I sleep 12 hours out of 24, I have spent half of my life asleep. While this might alarm some people, I am really quite proud of it. I know there's a whole big world out there to explore, and I do my fair share of it during my conscious hours, but I do a lot of much cooler stuff in my dreams. Oh yeah, also, I am living proof that you don't die in real life if you are falling in your dreams and don't wake up before you hit the ground. I have hit the ground several times from very great distances (like, 30,000 feet after jumping out of an airplane without a parachute and also not dying upon impact with Earth, or falling off a ferris wheel into an old-timey bucket of water that is made out of wood that is like a barrel but cut in half). In my dreams, I never have super powers, and I can't fly. I can't ever punch anyone with any effect, either, it's like I wind up to hit, but gravity somehow takes all the momentum out of my arm and I just barely tap whom or whatever I am trying to hit.
Anyway, I love taking naps. I love crawling into my bed during the daylight hours and being a little chilly in the cool, crisp sheets and finding a position of comfort and just lying there falling asleep listening to Scrubs or Friends or Jurassic Park or whatever it is I have in my DVD player because I for some reason have more trouble falling asleep when it's super quiet than anything.
So why am I excited to take a nap today? Because I don't have to get up to go into work (as I quit my job via an incredibly well-written letter of resignation), I don't have homework, I don't have to clean anything, I don't have any doctor's appointments, and my favorite reason of all - I got up at 5:30am today. When I set my alarm, I set it for approximately 45 minutes before I have to physically get out of bed because there may be nothing I love more on this planet than not having to wake up as soon as your alarm goes off. And while we're talking about hitting the snooze button for 45 minutes, who decided that all clocks give you 9 minutes to snooze? Isn't 9 an arbitrary number, or does it mean something? Has it been scientifically proven that every person falls back asleep after like 1 minute and then getting 8 more minutes of sleep is beneficial? I don't get it. Anyway, when my brain is in that 70% asleep/30% awake state during that 45 minutes, all I can think about is a.) how tired I am and b.) when I will be able to go back to sleep during the next 24 hours. Ironically, I am also able to do time and math in this state, which is completely amazing to me since I suck at math when I'm 100% conscious, but I am able to figure out how many more multiples of 9 minutes I can sleep. Some people are asleep asleep, like my mom, who when you try to wake her up out of a sound sleep, she talks and makes promises that she has no recollection of later, but somehow I am asleep awake enough to do multiplication. Maybe we should test this someday and see how much I get right....
And since I got Phoenix, I have to sleep with my door open because if he is awake and I am asleep, he obsessively has to come in and check on me every few minutes to make sure I am still there. So instead of actually fully closing the door, I leave it cracked in case he decides he needs to see me. This causes all kinds of other problems, namely that because I live with my parents and my dad is at home during the day right now, it's impossible to STAY asleep because he is coming up and down the stairs (which creak excessively loud and maybe I will see if I can fix them once and for all), or coughing or cooking or talking on the phone really loudly, but TODAY HE IS NOT HERE, and I can sleep as deeply as I can whilst Phoenix barks at the ducks in the creek out back. There is nothing more glorious than being able to take a nap guilt-free!
Anyway, my body's need for sleep far exceeds that of most humans. I don't function particularly well on less than 8 hours, and prefer to get 10-12. Someone pointed out that if I sleep 12 hours out of 24, I have spent half of my life asleep. While this might alarm some people, I am really quite proud of it. I know there's a whole big world out there to explore, and I do my fair share of it during my conscious hours, but I do a lot of much cooler stuff in my dreams. Oh yeah, also, I am living proof that you don't die in real life if you are falling in your dreams and don't wake up before you hit the ground. I have hit the ground several times from very great distances (like, 30,000 feet after jumping out of an airplane without a parachute and also not dying upon impact with Earth, or falling off a ferris wheel into an old-timey bucket of water that is made out of wood that is like a barrel but cut in half). In my dreams, I never have super powers, and I can't fly. I can't ever punch anyone with any effect, either, it's like I wind up to hit, but gravity somehow takes all the momentum out of my arm and I just barely tap whom or whatever I am trying to hit.
Anyway, I love taking naps. I love crawling into my bed during the daylight hours and being a little chilly in the cool, crisp sheets and finding a position of comfort and just lying there falling asleep listening to Scrubs or Friends or Jurassic Park or whatever it is I have in my DVD player because I for some reason have more trouble falling asleep when it's super quiet than anything.
So why am I excited to take a nap today? Because I don't have to get up to go into work (as I quit my job via an incredibly well-written letter of resignation), I don't have homework, I don't have to clean anything, I don't have any doctor's appointments, and my favorite reason of all - I got up at 5:30am today. When I set my alarm, I set it for approximately 45 minutes before I have to physically get out of bed because there may be nothing I love more on this planet than not having to wake up as soon as your alarm goes off. And while we're talking about hitting the snooze button for 45 minutes, who decided that all clocks give you 9 minutes to snooze? Isn't 9 an arbitrary number, or does it mean something? Has it been scientifically proven that every person falls back asleep after like 1 minute and then getting 8 more minutes of sleep is beneficial? I don't get it. Anyway, when my brain is in that 70% asleep/30% awake state during that 45 minutes, all I can think about is a.) how tired I am and b.) when I will be able to go back to sleep during the next 24 hours. Ironically, I am also able to do time and math in this state, which is completely amazing to me since I suck at math when I'm 100% conscious, but I am able to figure out how many more multiples of 9 minutes I can sleep. Some people are asleep asleep, like my mom, who when you try to wake her up out of a sound sleep, she talks and makes promises that she has no recollection of later, but somehow I am asleep awake enough to do multiplication. Maybe we should test this someday and see how much I get right....
And since I got Phoenix, I have to sleep with my door open because if he is awake and I am asleep, he obsessively has to come in and check on me every few minutes to make sure I am still there. So instead of actually fully closing the door, I leave it cracked in case he decides he needs to see me. This causes all kinds of other problems, namely that because I live with my parents and my dad is at home during the day right now, it's impossible to STAY asleep because he is coming up and down the stairs (which creak excessively loud and maybe I will see if I can fix them once and for all), or coughing or cooking or talking on the phone really loudly, but TODAY HE IS NOT HERE, and I can sleep as deeply as I can whilst Phoenix barks at the ducks in the creek out back. There is nothing more glorious than being able to take a nap guilt-free!
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