Sleep deprivation theater.
Oct. 24th, 2005 03:44 pmDuring most of Alex's night wakings, I am neither fully awake nor fully asleep while I care for her. I am at the crossroads between sleep and waking, the place where hypnagogic imagery happens.[1]
The way it usually works is that recent cultural influences weave their way into the baby care process, usually in the form of momentarily convincing theories about why Alex is awake. Last night, for example, before bed I was reading Diane Duane's latest book, Wizards at War. At midnight, while I was giving Alex her bottle, I realized that she couldn't go back to sleep because we had to stay up and save the universe.
This beats all hell out of my previous theory, which arose very late one night after I'd watched the World Series of Poker before bed, and which involved Alex sleeping or waking depending on the strength of the poker hands she was dealt. I could never really figure out the details of that one.
[1] Dreams that happen while you're still awake, as you're passing into sleep. I notice that, in the skeptic's dictionary, the definition of "hypnagogic state" says, "see also alien abduction." Huh.
The way it usually works is that recent cultural influences weave their way into the baby care process, usually in the form of momentarily convincing theories about why Alex is awake. Last night, for example, before bed I was reading Diane Duane's latest book, Wizards at War. At midnight, while I was giving Alex her bottle, I realized that she couldn't go back to sleep because we had to stay up and save the universe.
This beats all hell out of my previous theory, which arose very late one night after I'd watched the World Series of Poker before bed, and which involved Alex sleeping or waking depending on the strength of the poker hands she was dealt. I could never really figure out the details of that one.
[1] Dreams that happen while you're still awake, as you're passing into sleep. I notice that, in the skeptic's dictionary, the definition of "hypnagogic state" says, "see also alien abduction." Huh.