Test your knowledge with these seven problems. No need to show your work; I’m too tired to understand it anyway.
- Although it’s lights out for Sandra at 11 p.m., it takes her 46 minutes to fall asleep. She then wakes up five times over the course of the night to: 1) Drink water 2) Pee 3) Retract duvet from slumbering husband 4) Worry 5) Pee. If each wake-up requires an average of 13 minutes to fall back to sleep, how many solid hours of shut-eye will Sandra have had when she wakes up for good at 4:16 a.m.?
Answer: The same as she gets every night: zero.
- Sandra’s new goal is to get seven hours of sleep each night. If she spends 1/2 of her intended sleep time fanning down hot flashes, and 1/4 of those hot flashes turn into cold sweats that keep her awake for another 33 minutes, is the amount of Sandra’s REM-sleep greater or less than the amount of time she spends considering Estrogen Replacement Therapy? (Hint: remember to flip and multiply.)
Answer: REM < ERT
- If Sandra’s husband, Mark, who doesn’t suffer from insomnia but did have a cheeseburger and two craft brews on Guys Night Out, continues to toss restlessly in their double bed, creating nonstop motion transfer and a tsunami of resentment from Sandra, what is the correct order of sleep operations? Poke husband; Whisper, Move again, Buster, and I’m going to murder your sorry ass; Slap husband until he wakes up and innocently asks, Huh?; Act like you were sound asleep and he woke you up; Cuss husband out.
Mnemonic clue hint: Weird Sally Can’t Prepare Artichokes.
Answer: Whisper, Slap, Cuss, Poke, Act.
Extra credit: What is the wavelength of the resentment tsunami in problem 3?
Answer: Twice the width of a $6000 organic latex mattress multiplied by the length of a $44.99 ChiliGel Cooling Pad to the power of three useless bottles of Whole Foods melatonin tablets.
- The average person has approximately 100 billion brain cells, and one night of poor sleep leads to a loss of 7000 cells. If Sandra hasn’t slept in eighteen years, how many brain cells has she lost due to missed sleep?
Answer: Not as many as she’s lost from chugging 1-2 bottles of Benadryl per month.
- Sandra starts staring at the digital clock at 3:14 a.m., wondering when she’ll fall back to sleep. Her neighbor Margaret wakes up at the exact same time, but instead of watching the clock, she sniffs her lavender sachet while reading Wayne Dyer books on her Kindle Paperwhite. If Sandra and Margaret both fall back to sleep at 5:07 a.m. and stay asleep until 6:30 a.m., which woman will feel like she’s had more sleep and act annoyingly well rested all day?
Answer: Margaret. But nobody cares, plus she’ll smell like lavender.
- If instead of counting sheep, Sandra counts the myriad ways she might die before her son graduates college in four years, what is the probability that she will actually fall asleep?
Answer: Less than or equal to zero, amounting to a sleep debt that will carry over until she meets her untimely demise from drought-related dehydration.
- After binge watching Transparent Season 1, Sandra goes to bed at a commendable 10 p.m. When she can’t fall asleep, she tells herself that watching one more season will definitely make her really tired. But it doesn’t. What will happen first: Sandra will fall asleep or Jeffrey Tambor’s character will have spent a decade as a woman with a fully functioning vagina?
Answer: Vagina.
21 Comments
Add comment Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Jeez your insomnia WAY “trumps” mine! You’ve obviously retained more than enough quality brain cells (I’m not even gonna mess with math right now) to write a coherent and hilarious ode to insomnia! Hope you are catching some zzzz’s right now. XO Connie
Thanks Connie. I do see that you wrote that at 5:45am. Probably hour two of being up for you. zzzz
Sandra, great post. I fall asleep just fine, but routinely wake up at 3:17 to pee. Not sure women over 45 can sleep through the night.
I love the tempo of this post because that is the reality of the night where I cannot control my thoughts. I’m all over the universe. This is why I need to stay in bed until about 7:30, so I get enough sleep to not be a zombie.
on the other napping hand, I can’t seem to stay awake earlier in the evening if we watch a movie. Usually takes 3 viewings to see the entire film.
are we supposed to sleep on 7 hour stretches? I am no longer certain.
Thanks Giuletta. You make some good points. I am absolutely convinced that we aren’t supposed to sleep in 7 hour stretches, so I often get up to wander, meditate, eat peanut butter–you know, things the Ancient people did after a two-hour burst of sleep. As for movies, forget it. When we go out to see one in the theater, my husband calls them my 10 dollar naps. At home, I’m out before the first plot point. But…but…I recently went to an excellent hypnotherapist and seem to be turning things around. I’m on week two of feeling better. So. Hope.
Humor in desperate times. Sandra you are too funny!! Thank you for this, Ann
Thanks, Ann. When the choice is laugh or cry over sleeplessness, humor is usually the better option.
Holy Hell…my life last night. ugh Well written and now I have math anxiety as well. Great!
Math anxiety? Of course. But at least one of those dreams where you’re running through the halls naked trying to get to your Calculus final means that you’re sleeping. I’d take that anyday. Nap well, my friend.
not sure where to start. when i was little (3 or 4) my mother sent me out of our apt on Pennsylvania ave to wait on the back steps of our neighbor, who was a milk man that came home from work around 6.30. after i was married and my wife had our first baby, she discovered breast feeding wasn’t for her and I enjoyed waking up once or twice a night to feed the baby. now, at age 67, i go to bed early (before 9) and wake up at 12, 2 and 3.30, before leaving the house at 4.30 to go to the Y (looking forward to my favorite podcasts (if I’m weight training) or articles from the New Yorker and Sport Illustrated (if i’m on the treadmill or the elliptical). i do realize one key difference between you and me: my eyes are closing at 8.30.
It’s wonderful to hear that you embrace the night. Maybe that’s the trick, to just make peace with those hours. My struggle. And, yes, as I’m writing this at 10pm, you’ve already been asleep for an hour. So there’s that. ZZZZZZ
The insomnia cure consists of nothing more than ocean waves and peace of mind…
Thanks for the reminder. Gotta get me some waves.
Reading this at 4:19 am during another night similar to yours. Thanks for making me laugh -as always – at the absurd reality of life. Loved it!
Thanks Cheryl. Hope you got back to sleep.
Aaah Sandra, as always, a spot on commentary on the reality of life in these times. Is it possible that our lives are too easy and so we must play out our rightful share of suffering on the field of insomnia? I think I’ll stay awake tonight and think about that. My insomnia potion is a stack of podcasts that play quietly during the night. I wake up often and just listen to whatever is playing (no politics or racial stuff!) and the monkeys in my head forget what they were shrieking as they swung from limb to limb, and the monkeys and I fall back to sleep. Sometimes. And kudos and extra credit to you for using the word, myriad, correctly. You are one in a million, in more ways than one.
Thank you Gwen. May we all find our ways to rest.
Ahhh,…. sorry.
The Husband
It’s gonna take more than sorry.
For the Husband: https://www.amazon.com/Science-Sleep-Snore-More-Pillow/dp/B001FSK69G/ref=sr_1_3_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1512398599&sr=8-3&keywords=snore+no+more+pillow
Uh, yeah. Thanks, but we have ours boxed up and ready to go back for refund. We put a lot of unfounded hope in that thing.
[…] Add to the list: nightmares, hyper vigilance, and the micro traumas that steal our joy, our concentration, and our sleep. […]