the calculus of sleep

I think when you get right down to it, I get to blame Isaac Newton. In order to develop his various laws for motion and gravity he had to ramp up conventional mathematics into what we now know as calculus. I haven't taken calculus since high school and I wasn't particularly great at it then. Little did I know when I got pregnant that I should have started a crash course to bone up on my skills.

I knew vaguely that once I had a kid my relationship with sleep would be altered. But I imagined it to be a basic arithmetic problem:

(the amount of sleep that I would like to be getting) - (# of times I get up to nurse the baby)* (the time spent on the big rubber ball bouncing him back to sleep) = the new amount of sleep that I would be getting.

And for the baby:

(the length of each nap) + (the amount of time he sleeps at night) = the amount of sleep he gets in a 24 hour period.

Simple, right?

WRONG. So so wrong.

Instead of basic addition and subtraction my life now revolves around complex logarithmic functions where to calculate the amount of sleep I am getting you have to find the area under that tail of the curve that is approaching some infinitesimally small number. And that's the simple math.

When it comes to the baby? I don't even know if there is a name for this. There is probably some brilliant Eastern European mathematician holed up in a garret somewhere crumpling balls of paper and pulling out his hair trying to flesh out the laws & theories behind the math it takes to deal with the sleep habits of a 5 month old.

malaise

Dear internet, please tell me I am not the only one curled up on the couch at 6:30 on a Wednesday, trying to decide between continuing to nap, starting to drink, or eating myself out of house and home.  

Every year I go through a small bout of what I like to call my February Doldrums.

Only this year, it seems to have started in January.

I blame the cold.  And the dark.  

And the broke-ness.

But it is always cold and dark in January.

And I am always broke. 

So what gives?  Why do I have a persistent sense of dissatisfaction and mild grumpiness?

I have a whole list of little fun projects and big important work that I need to be attending to, but today I came home and it was so cold in my house that I had no choice but to sit down on my couch, with my jacket, hat and scarf still firmly in place, and watch the end of Charlie's Angels until I warmed up enough to make a cup of tea.  Charlie's Angles! I despise Cameron Diaz and her shockingly evident ribcage.

I'm not trying to be picky.  I'm not wishing for 70 degrees & sunny.  I just want it to be warm enough to take my dog for a walk in the park before we both lose our minds.  I was trying to take a bath yesterday and she kept barging in to the bathroom and sticking her head over the rim of the tub until she'd had enough of my dallying and threw her toy right into the water. Lovely.

I know it is cold where you are as well.  I'm wishing you warm thoughts, hot toddies and a seat by the fire until this cold snap breaks.  Then, we can all meet in the park.  I'll be the one running in circles with a jackrabbit on a leash.