Scribbles & Munch

      Just to be clear: I was into sleep before it was cool.
      Lately I seem to be hearing of all these recent studies on the health benefits of sleep--or, more importantly, the serious health risks of NOT getting enough sleep.  Sleep deprivation has been linked to everything from catching colds to Alzheimer's.  Not to mention the decreased reaction time, memory problems, poor work performance, and mood disfunction.  And my reaction to all of this?  "Well, duh!"

The sign of a happy Z.D.

      I discovered my personal relationship with sleep in high school, on a fateful Wednesday night when I snuck out of the house to go hang out with my boyfriend.*  It was the most uneventful act of teenage rebellion ever, since he slept through my tapping on his still-locked window and I just turned around and went home.  But the whole thing took about 2 precious hours out of my night's repose.  When my alarm went off at 6:45am, I was a miserable, groggy, ill-tempered Z.D.  I cried "sick!" and got to stay home, but I wasn't able to get properly back to sleep and I could tell that my memory and thought processes were off for the next couple days.
      I pledged never to set myself up that way again, and I never have.  In fact, I have never begrudged my body's need for sleep, even that one time I slept through my alarm in college and missed a lecture with my favorite professor.  My philosophy: if I slept through that alarm, my brain needed the rest, and it's a good thing that I got it!  Throughout my adult life I have prioritized allowing a solid 8 hours for uninterrupted sleep.
      Too bad my body doesn't always want to cooperate.

If you Google "cat attacking the bed," a LOT of hits show up.

      The end of Daylight Savings Time used to be an awesome thing: an extra hour to do whatever I wanted, woot!**  But this year, my cat couldn't handle it.  Her internal clock said, "No, the time to feed me breakfast is now, I know it's now, my tummy says now, now, now, MEOW!"  And to a cat, that's the only one that matters.  When her guardians mysteriously insisted on ignoring her and staying in bed for an extra hour after she wanted us to get up, she came to the logical conclusion that she needed to compensate by waking us up another hour earlier than that.  So she started walking across our faces and meowing at 4am.
      It took about a week to train the cat to adapt to the new feeding schedule.  It's taking my brain longer to unlearn that 4am is the new wake-up time.
      I go through different layers of sleep deprivation.  The first layer is a scarcely noticible exasperation, easy to tune out.  The second layer is amusement--my brain attempts to defend itself with humor, and my inner-monologue becomes increasingly goofy.  I do a lot of spontaneously giggling to myself at this phase, and I'm pretty sure it scares some people.  But they should be more afraid of the third layer, where I become bitterly impatient with everything, including myself.  The fourth layer includes a lot of verbal lashing out at people, interspersed with crying.  At the fifth, I am sufficiently incapacitated that it would be literal safety hazard to let me do anything other than lay in bed.
      So: how does this effect my writing?
      As you might expect, the first layer doesn't do much.  The second can be beneficial, even, if I'm willing to let myself word spew and edit the hell out of it later.  But at the third layer, I am either in the zone, or irritated at every little thing that distracts me from my potential state of genius.
      The fourth and fifth layers I will leave up to your imagination.
      So where am I now? Hovering between that third and fourth layer.  I have a long weekend coming up, and then a holiday vacation after that, so as long I'm smart about it I should be back on track for healthy sleep in no time.  Which means the cat will be back in my good graces 24/7.  After all, she can sleep whenever and wherever she wants, the lucky little fuzzball.



*I'm pretty sure enough time has elapsed now that I won't get grounded if my parents read this.

**Which is often - you guessed it - sleep.