Operation Sandman Night 8: "Yes; bless the man who first invented sleep (I really can't avoid the iteration); But blast the man with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off,—Early Rising."

I skipped last night, because when we got Mr F into his bed, I first went to get a glass of water and knocked a bunch of stuff over and then tripped over Sweetie in the hall so I gave up and went to bed at about 8:15, where I read for 5 minutes before falling asleep and not waking up at all until 6:45 this morning.

Anyway, tonight's my night. We went for the usual ride and he's been in bed about 15 minutes. He groused a little at the end of the ride because he wanted to go around again, but I said No not just because we'd just taken one but in fact we'd taken two: before his nightly ride we'd gone for a ride as a family because it was raining and Mr Bunches was scared and wanted to settle down.

I can hear him fidgeting in there, but he's not too bad.

Sweetie reported that last night he only woke up twice, at 2 and at 4, and each time he went back to sleep pretty quickly. The problem last night was Mr Bunches: it rained last night, too, and he heard the thunder and woke up at 1. He never got back to sleep, and a couple times he called for Sweetie.

We're thinking once school starts next week it might help. We don't know if the lack of a routine during the day makes it worse. They have a bit of a routine with Sweetie, but it's not as rigid as when school's in session. Routine really, really, helps them be calm. Plus school tires them out, more than we could possibly do even if we ran around all day doing stuff, which we do a lot of days anyway. School's just more strenuous all around, probably because there are so many things they have to think about.

But he seems like he's doing better.

The other night I watched an old Seinfeld where Kramer decides to sleep only 20 minutes every three hours, like Leonardo Da Vinci did.

The trouble with that is that there's no proof that Da Vinci actually engaged in what's called "polyphasic sleep," meaning "sleep for more than one period a day." Polyphasic sleep is an example of a circadian rhythm disorder, when the body is out of whack from the normal sleep cycle. It's sometimes caused by head injuries, and I wondered if Mr F might have that from his old head injury, but that was four years ago (almost four years to the day), and it doesn't seem like it would just crop up now with no other symptoms or problems.

While I was reading about that, I came across the concept of "sleep inertia," which is actually a thing! (Mr F is in there talking to himself now; I just shushed him. It's 9:10 pm as I write this.) I've felt often that even though I woke up, I didn't wake up wake up, so to speak. That's sleep inertia.

"Sleep inertia" is grogginess and clumsiness when you wake up. It happens the worst if you're awakened in the first 10-30 minutes of sleep; the few times this year that I've dozed off on a lazy afternoon or evening, and been woken up, I've felt the rest of the day like I'm still half-asleep. So at least I know my thing is actually a thing and not just me  being lazy.