Fervent readers may have noticed that I don’t have a Challenge this week. This is OK. It’s the holidays. Other than debating errant mohels, I have spent a pleasing half-week performing small domestic duties. Steaming pumpkin to freeze in pie-sized mashed portions, embroidering the snortlepig’s pyjamas, transforming festering bananas into muffins and cakes, kneading bread, sweeping the floor… that sort of thing. It’s fun, and it makes me feel productive. So all is well.
I’m also vaguely working on an article for Mindfood magazine about Western conceptions of sleep and the unusualness thereof. One of the concepts I mention is polyphasic sleep (not as an example of what Western people normally do, obviously); and having read a few blogs documenting the experience, I have to say the idea is only half-tempting. The basic gist of polyphasic sleep is sleeping in small chunks throughout the 24-hour period rather than one long stretch at night - usually the experimenters go for a “core sleep” of 3-6 hours plus several 20-minute naps. Interestingly, all the blogs I’ve read so far have ended with the experimenters modifying or abandoning polyphasic sleep altogether, but not for reasons of health or tiredness. In fact, some of them said they felt more energised on the polyphasic method. What they couldn’t deal with what the psychological impact. Quite a few mentioned feeling isolated by being up when the rest of the world was down; others said their wives didn’t appreciate sleeping alone; and one guy wrote quite eloquently about the depressingness of relegating sleep to a chore rather than a time of luxurious relaxation and rejuvenation. Plus, of course, there’s the possibility that avoiding certain sleep cycles on a regular basis might cause you to become insane, and you know, kill you. The jury’s still out on that one, apparently.
Anyway,the idea is semi-tempting I tend to revel in any free hours I get just for myself, with no snortlepig to care for. I could work the schedule due to being a stay-at-home mother. I could use my extra several hours a day to learn a new language, write the Great American Novel or, horror of horrors, even get some of the housework done. And being both somewhat Aspie and in a funny timezone, I don’t think the isolation would bug me a bit.
But then, realistically, what would I do up at four AM? I’d surf the Internet, is what. And I wouldn’t get to put my cold feet on Helpdesk Man in the middle of the night or use the snortlepig for a convenient hottie-bottle. (She may not have many handy talents, that pig, but by gum, she’s a useful size.)
With that in mind, it’s 10:45 and I am still in my pyjamas. I gotta go get dressed, chase the chickens out of the neighbor’s yard (long story), put on Doogie Howser and embroider another line of blanket stitch on the dude’s pyjama top.
Mark Says: