Polyphasic Sleep and Better Thinking
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Spiders and other sneaky things

What does a movie look like to a spider?

I had V playing while puttering this morning after my 9 a.m. nap, and sitting on a footstool I turned to my right and almost picked up the empty coffee-cup that sat next to me, on the baby’s table.  But I saw it in time — one of those tan-yellow translucent spiders, only about 3/4″ long.  It was perched at the top of the handle where it joins the cup, making a perfect flat spot for a spider exactly that size to sit.  It was facing the television.  It would have had a perfect view.

Do I have a house-spider that was digging V?  And if so, is it angry at me for pausing the movie to write this?

A note to polyphasers with significant others:  Beware the Kindly Ones.  Sometimes they are more sabotage than the mean ones.  My husband, for instance, shut off all my alarms last night when they went off, because I looked like I was enjoying the rest, I suppose.  (To be fair, this week has been so stressful with work/school/family that I was nearly physically ill with it by Friday.)  I do not doubt the purity of his intentions, but I still made it clear to him that he was risking an ass-whupping if he ever did it again.  I even opened my eyes at one point and thought, “Oh, no alarms yet!  Great!” and went back to sleep.  I overslept two hours.  *sigh*  Now I get to be tired tonight, and probably have to spend it doing homework too.  Yaaaaay. 

So yes.  Watch out for the nice ones; they may want to save you from yourself!

And if there’s spiders in your house, you may be able to placate them with television.  Um.  Good television.  I wouldn’t show them reality shows or Joss Whedon or anything; they might lay an egg-sack in your nose.  I knew a guy that happened to once.  ::shudder::

3 comments

1 jeanniet6 { 11.04.06 at 7:17 pm }

thanks for using my picture, Oddly enough though I just started meditating about 7 weeks ago. I find this just amazing if i read your stories right .Kind of a confirmation of sorts.
anyway thanks again for using the pic.

2 Cheryl { 11.07.06 at 12:11 am }

I’m not very knowledgeable about polyphasia (is that the correct term?). To be quite honest, I’d never heard of it before reading your blogs. A mildly interesting concept… one of which I cannot even begin to understand the reasoning behind. But hey, it’s your body, your sleep pattern, your life, so do with it as you see fit! But, I have to wonder, in the interest of your ‘significant other’, if these alarms going off with alarming frequency *pun intended* disrupt his sleep patterns at all. I’ll put it this way… I’m a light sleeper and if my husband had alarms going off while I was getting my usual ‘straight eight’, I’d be quite perturbed with him.

As for spiders, I had heard at one time that we are always within at least five feet of a spider throughout our entire lifetime! Thankfully I’m not arachniphobic. ;)

3 puredoxyk { 11.07.06 at 9:04 am }

Interesting, about the spiders!

My adjustment period was almost as hard on my boy as it was on me, heh. Of course I tried hard to accomodate him, both with alarms and other things (like snuggle-time, which we don’t get unless I make a point of it).

Now, it’s not so bad. Usually I only need one alarm to wake up, like anybody else (it just goes off at either 1 or 4 a.m., depending on whether I slept at 9 or 1). Sometimes I hit a rocky patch and need to double up on alarms for a bit, but I’ve figured out to put a reeeeally loud one right by my head (which gets shut off immediately) and a quieter one farther away that goes off a few minutes later. Combined with sleeping on the couch so he doesn’t get bothered by me getting up, this works fine for him.

As far as I can tell, living/sleeping with someone else is a compromise and a dance of consideration of each others’ habits no matter what kind of sleeper you are. I know plenty of regular, monophasic sleepers who need more than one alarm, too! ;)

-PD

P.S. We’ve just been calling it “polyphasic sleep”, but I think “polyphasia” is a really cool word! So thanks!