Althouse: Things people do between 1st and 2nd sleeps.

March 1, 2012

Things people do between 1st and 2nd sleeps.

If you sleep in 2 parts — which can be quite normal and healthy — what do you do in the between period?

36 comments:

Henry said...: sleep.; 3/1/12, 6:19 PM
Carnifex said...: I swear to God, Althouse, you're getting as nosy as the federal government!(J/k)

Personally, I sleep in several short periods, and in the time I'm awake I do what all old men do...; 3/1/12, 6:21 PM
Carnifex said...: That entails rubbing the ol' ball and chains, butt,back, knee, feet, whatever is hurting her when I wake up. Ohh, and go bathroom.; 3/1/12, 6:24 PM
traditionalguy said...: Whatever it is, you need do it in your PJs or all the free time will be spent undressing, dressing, undressing and dressing... and no putting them back on inside out.

Take the dog out, if you can wake her up. She happens to be sane and knows when it is bedtime and when it is morning.; 3/1/12, 6:26 PM
edutcher said...: Catch up on what the blogs say, clean up the place, eat something and take a couple of potassia, try to clear out my sinuses so I can breathe.; 3/1/12, 6:28 PM
Jackit said...: If you can't breath, how do you wake up? I mean your dead.
I guess you hibernate. You should volunter to be a study subject at a University.
They will pay you too.; 3/1/12, 6:33 PM
kimsch said...: Do some reading in the quiet with a dog on my lap and a very small cat on my shoulder.

I have tons of books in my Kindle and I'm still working my way through the first four of the Game of Thrones series in paperback (in book 2).; 3/1/12, 6:34 PM
edutcher said...: Jackit said...

If you can't breath, how do you wake up? I mean your dead.

I guess you hibernate. You should volunter to be a study subject at a University.

They will pay you too.

No, just because you can't breathe doesn't mean you're dead.

If you can't breathe for a sufficient period of time, you wake up.

Since I have restless leg, my breathing has a tendency to stop while I sleep, which The Blonde, sometimes aided by the pups, will notice and wake me up.; 3/1/12, 6:40 PM
mariner said...: I try to go back to sleep.; 3/1/12, 6:41 PM
mesquito said...: I say a very bad word, then I pee.; 3/1/12, 6:43 PM
Penny said...: The same thing I do before I head off to my first sleep, sometimes my third sleep, and always upon waking.; 3/1/12, 6:48 PM
wyo sis said...: Browse my favorite sites, make lesson plans and pay bills with the TV on in the background for company.; 3/1/12, 6:51 PM
Penny said...: Mosquito! lol I forgot the "say a bad word" part between first and second and second and third sleep.; 3/1/12, 6:55 PM
Saint Croix said...: If you sleep in 2 parts — which can be quite normal and healthy...

I have a theory that adults think more than children. That's the difficulty in staying asleep. Your mind is racing and wants to wake up. Of course the trick to going back to sleep is to think of nothing.

Also, physical exhaustion helps.

I dunno, I slept a lot more when I was a child. 8-10 hours, easy, and it was all night long.

Now it's 4-6 hours.

I find it kind of annoying, actually. I find myself falling asleep at weird times. Naps happen more often.; 3/1/12, 7:06 PM
Penny said...: Here's the thing.

Most people who have a rigid time schedule set up a war with the damn clock in their bedroom.

While this practice helps nearly all with learning basic addition and subtraction, it doesn't do much else but agitate we primitive sorts who are still on caveman time.

UNLESS?

We learn from Althouse?

Great series of posts on sleep here. Wish I knew then what I know now.; 3/1/12, 7:11 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: I was looking for a place where I lived to see what became of it.

I recall walking the distance from the school bus stop to my house. The kids fanned out and my path took me through a small park in the center of our block, the shortcut diagonally. The sky was gray and windy and little bit wet. Suddenly the park was filled with dragonflies all flying in the same direction with the wind and with apparent purpose. Millions of them. All sizes, all colors. The gray became glittering technicolor. I marveled. It was biblical. Epic. Then it was gone. I experienced it entirely alone and it only happened once.

In searching I found a dismaying lot of crap. Apparently the people I grew up with were real goofballs. Their reunion type websites are loaded with ridiculously simplistic and annoying animated gifs all over the pages as if they are enhancements. They relate military brat anecdotes and it's all small potatoes. Nobody gets arrested by the Japanese police or the MP and nobody stows away to Alaska. It's all Narimasu Teen Club stuff. Total bummer.

I did find some maps and another item I thought was interesting. A guy wrote saying he was a Japanese boy looking into the gated places where I lived and went to school and he imagined it being California. That was his idea of California in microcosm right there for him to observe.

I didn't realize how small the communities were and how they are interlinked and how the areas that I explored are patches. None of the photographs I saw online match very closely to our own photographs. Although I could see my house in an earlier incarnation and as a dot on a map, and I could see the open areas where I flew my kites. And I saw the wire that stabilized a telephone pole that interfered with our football games.

That cluster of bases and dependent living areas are all science buildings and research centers along with a little patch they call Dragonfly Park.; 3/1/12, 7:13 PM
Mel said...: Laundry and light reading. I put a load in the dryer and one in the washer before the first sleep. I get up remove the dry load, reload the dryer, reload the washer, fold the dry load and read for about 30 minutes then go back to sleep. Sometimes I substitute playing solitare for reading.; 3/1/12, 7:40 PM
Simon Kenton said...: I supervise the internet, which has usually gotten pretty entropic by then. I can usually get it settled back down and re-ordered by 4.; 3/1/12, 7:51 PM
Deb said...: Have a cup of coffee and a piece of toast. Then, one or more of the following: give the dogs a little snack so they'll leave me alone, let the dogs out, check email, check blogs, let the dogs back in, read, watch TV. Then I'm usually ready for sleep again.; 3/1/12, 7:58 PM
bagoh20 said...: If I sleep late, I watch "I dream of Jeanie" at 5:30am or if I wake earlier it's Adult Swim on the cartoon network. I'm not awake enough yet to actually DO anything.; 3/1/12, 8:39 PM
Henry said...: I dream that Chip Ahoy is named Poet Laureate before I die.

And represents the United States, or some other country, at the Venice Biennale.

What if this were a popup?; 3/1/12, 8:42 PM
coketown said...: I sleep through the whole night because I don't have a weak bladder, achy joints, irritable bowels, etc. This first/second sleep thing is just a way to make old people not seem old. "Oh, phew. Waking up in the middle of the night is actually natural. I thought I was just getting old."

Oh, the kettle's boiling. I'm going to pour a cup of tea and watch Keeping Up Appearances.; 3/1/12, 8:50 PM
Meade said...: Intercourse.; 3/1/12, 9:31 PM
Penny said...: Henry, a pop up to the right of a mere 45 degrees, and she's levitating!

180 has her standing on her head, and that seems harsh. No?

Then there's the 45 degrees to the left, which might work for some...as long as they aren't claustrophobic.; 3/1/12, 9:40 PM
Wince said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 3/1/12, 9:51 PM
Penny said...: Now that I think about it, Chip doesn't just turn things around online. He makes them MOVE around and around!

Wonder if he enjoys that more than his pop-ups?; 3/1/12, 9:53 PM
Wince said...: Perfecting the art of peeing with a boner.; 3/1/12, 9:53 PM
Carnifex said...: Yeah, you can tell the really old guys from just the guys with this one. Peeing with a boner is old school. Try peeing then stopping, then peeing, then stopping, experiment a little. Push yourself. Go for the record.

3 old guys in a nursery home. The 60 y.o. sez "Men, I can remember as a young man, I would take a good healthy pee every morning @ 7 am."

The 70 y.o. sez "Guys, I can remember as a young man, taking a good healthy poop every morning at 8"

The 80 sez "Boys. Every morning at 7 am I take a good healthy pee. And every morning at 8 I take a good healthy poop." He pauses and reflects "I just wish, I just wish...I could wake up before 9"

@Chip

Never been where you described until just now. Now that I have, I'll be looking for it everywhere.

PS. any typos are due to the kittens fault, she likes to eat fingers.; 3/1/12, 10:19 PM
Penny said...: Hm? Didn't see any typos there, Carniflex?

I might say you're being too hard on yourself if I didn't have a mouthful of fingers.; 3/2/12, 1:08 AM
Toad Trend said...: EDH

Still laughing, I use a modified version of the #3, the downward spiral...; 3/2/12, 7:07 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: @Saint-Croix ... get outside into very bright light more often. As you age the darkening of the lens means that if you're inside most of the day you're getting the wrong wavelengths to keep your body's sleep rhythms in order.; 3/2/12, 8:07 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: @Coker et al -- it's not necessarily about "old" people. I've been two-sleeping it since age 9, which was when I finally stopped pissing my bed.

To this day (now in my 60s) that first sleep is sometimes all I get. If I've been working hard physically (I farm for a living) I'll do that second cycle, sometimes after 90 minutes, and sometimes after 3 hours.

Otherwise I'm up for the day.

What do I do? Well the wife definitely prefers to pounce after her first sleep, an offer I've refused perhaps twice in over twenty years.

If I'm physically beat I'll pray for awhile -- this world offers multiple topics for prayer -- change the baby (I have an infant daughter), or very rarely go outside to see the stars.

When I know I'm done for the night I get up to do bookkeeping for our business, read history, and actually do strategic thinking. My very best mental time of the day is from about 0300 to 0600.

Wrote, revised, and published a book that way -- pre- word-processors and computers -- in a little over two months.

I still read between 800 and 1200 pages of non-fiction per month, not counting my professional reading, most of it between sleeps or during the "second sleep" that ain't gonna happen that day.; 3/2/12, 8:24 AM
Patrick said...: I worry.; 3/2/12, 8:54 AM
Rusty said...: I'd love to get a good second sleep, but the fire engine keeps waking me up.; 3/2/12, 10:40 AM
Michael said...: Asleep at 11:00. Instantly. End first sleep at 2:00. Sit on screen porch in all weather for thirty minutes or so. Observe the trees swaying or the rain pelting or watch the clouds reflecting the dimmed city lights. Resume sleep. Awake 5:00.; 3/2/12, 11:28 AM
One Particular Harbor said...: Write and draw. Super creative at that hour. If I'm particularly anxious about something, I read. And if my husband happens to be up at the same time, sex. Sex is really good in the very early morning hours for some reason, and then we're never "scheduling it in", like some couples do (which is kind of sad, IMO).; 3/2/12, 12:14 PM