Night Math: Reckoning with Insomnia

Test your knowledge with these seven problems. No need to show your work; I’m too tired to understand it anyway.

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.