Sleeper Stool

Today, I took a nap. I'm not big on naps; I like ten-minute power naps alright, especially when I can actually knock out for those ten minutes, but anything longer than fifteen and I feel groggy and lazy. My nap today was forty minutes long, and it was a waste of time. Yeah, I was tired and, yeah, it really did help me focus on my homework afterward, but forty minutes? Really? I could have gone for twenty and been fine. It was originally planned as a fifteen minute nap, but every ten minutes I would reset my alarm clock and before I knew it, I'd been sleeping on and off for forty.

I consider myself a "stopsign partysleeper killerwhaledreaming." I'm not going to go into the etymology of the quote; I wrote it in a poem once and thought it sounded cool. I sleep two ways: curled up into a ball on my side, or splayed out on my stomach with my hands under the pillow above my head. 7% of people sleep in the "freefall" position (I call it party-sleeping), while 42% sleep in the fetal position. I found this article on yahoo news telling that sleeping positions can tell a lot about your personality. I wouldn't rely on a generalized study to tell me about my personality, but when I read it and reflected on it, it was somewhat accurate. Party-sleepers, it says, are "often gregarious and brash people, but can be nervy and thin-skinned underneath, and don't like criticism, or extreme situations." Sounds like me.

Here's the link to the BBC News article, if you're interested in seeing what your sleeping position may tell about you!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3112170.stm

There was another article posted on Yahoo news regarding a new sleep study that tested sleep habits and health. I already knew that lack of sleep was unhealthy, but this article says that "people who get less than six hours sleep per night have an increased risk [12%] of dying prematurely". I don't like that. It's just a study, there's nothing proven about it yet, and I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does. I'm usually worried about Aaron's health and sleeping habits (he's always tired, and he forces himself to stay awake when he has art to finish) and after reading this article, it makes me worry even more. Of course, if I were to say anything, he would disregard it. He'd say, "I've been doing this for years, it's fine" and if I was persistent, I have a feeling it would upset him. If I tried to refer to the study, he would say something along the lines of, "It's just a study. You're not supposed to take them 100%" and I would have to drop it. Still, it bothers me that he doesn't attempt to get more sleep. There is no such thing as catching up on sleep-- lost sleep is lost sleep. You're not supposed to wear yourself down to the point where you sleep for an entire day because your body can't keep up. Sleep needs to regulated.

Here's the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100505/hl_afp/healthsciencesleepbritainitaly

Speaking of sleep, I was the Nightmare on Elm Street remake this past weekend. I'm less scared of the visuals than I am of the noise; I had my ears covered whenever I thought something scary was going to happen. I don't think I would be as scared watching a horror movie if I were at home, where I can control the volume of the television and be able to turn on lights if I felt like I needed to. Anyway, I sat next to my friend Persiah and we were huddled together the entire time, her screaming, me covering my ears, whispering, "Omigod, omigod, omigod." I recently learned that, after you die, your brain still has 7-12 minutes of brain activity, and my friend Aydin and I discussed it in terms of the afterlife-- what if Heaven is really everything going on in your brain after your heart stops. It scared the hell out of me when he pointed out the information in relation to torture. God, that would be awful, the longest six and a half minutes of my life. But, I thought it was a fair movie-- not good, but not bad. I hate when the movies that actually have me hiding behind my hands throw in those really cheesy lines; it almost ruins the whole thing. "Your mouth says no, but your body says yes"? Really, Rorschach, really? I thought you were so much cooler than that.

I searched around for the "Inspiration Photos" blog that I mentioned before, the one that Anna sent me, and I found the link here: http://laylasphotoblog.blogspot.com/

I've been working really hard on my Intro to Fiction pieces. I finally have direction for my flash fiction piece, and I'm 80% of the way done with the first draft of my short story, which I am getting workshopped on next Friday. It's not the best concept I've ever had-- in fact, I almost hate it-- but it's realistic, and my classmates seem to LOVE realistic. Not many of them seem fantastical, and the ones who are appreciated the last version of my flash fiction piece and only requested minor changes. I'm starting from scratch on that one, though. It'll be posted at the end of May or the beginning of July, depending on when I complete it.

I guess that's it for now. There's nothing really to highlight in my life-- I do pretty much the same thing every day. I still need to work up the motivation to run every day, or even every other day. I swear it's going to happen though. I have to keep beating myself up about it. I WANT to run. I just don't know what times of the day I want to run. I will do it, though, and when I run every day in one week, I will write a blog about it. It's going to be next week. I'm going to the gym EVERY DAY next week. For real. I'm doing it.

Everyone's nagging at me to finish so we can go to dinner, so here we go.

Just to keep on top of posting writing, here's a crap poem I wrote the other day.

"Tequila, No Limes"

i wake up in the morning
greasy hair dry lips
bloodshot eyes and
my mouth tastes like tequila,
no limes.

static electricity from too much backseat dancing
hair standing erect

young soldier, don't you know you're already dead
you were dead when you were conceived
dead to your mother your father your country
you were dead before you enlisted
dead to God and dead to me

but you
me
we are all alive
to our enemy

he burns for us
cries for us
in his dreams, he wraps his arms around our naked bodies
and sings hymns

"i, a child of wrath and hell,
i should be called a child of God!"