So, it's been a busy week.  Here's what's gone on:

Tuesday and Wednesday, I napped at 10 pm and 1 am.  The 10 pm nap went perfectly, but I had the same difficulty getting up after the 1 am nap as I did from my midnight naps.  

Thursday and Friday nights, I developed an annoying habit of getting up, walking across the room, shutting off the alarm, and getting back in bed, without ever actually waking up, or so my boyfriend tells me.  This was rather problematic.

Saturday night, I completely cut out the 1 am nap and just went with the 20 min 10 pm nap.  I had difficulty staying awake from 2-3, but by 3:30 I was going strong and actually laid awake in bed for some time after 4.  This is promising.

Of course, that was also after two nights of nearly 8 hours of sleep.  It remains to be seen how sustainable it may be. 

So I got in bed at one this morning, and conked out readily . . . then woke up again at six in the morning, on the couch.  I have only one memory of the intervening time: pulling blankets up on the couch because I was cold.  It was probably also the fact that I was laying on a comfortable couch with blankets that put me to sleep so quickly.  This morning, I had a random youtube video paused at about seven minutes, so I figure with time to get to the couch, situate myself, and pull up the video, that gives me at least ten minutes between my nap and my sleep, and probably closer to fifteen.  

I guess my body clock kicked in, because I woke up on my own a little after six and, although rather groggy, had the sense to not go back to sleep, after I'd slept for about four and a half hours.  I'm lucky that happened; if I'd slept until eight or later, I might have had a problem.  As it is, I only slept for half an hour longer than normal, and woke up two hours before I normally would, so I think I'll be okay.  I almost fell asleep this afternoon when Bryon took a nap, and I consider that to be a good sign.

I'll post again after my 10 pm nap.

New Nap Schedule?

Okay so here's the deal:

As things are now, it's not possible for me to fall asleep for my 7 pm nap - it just doesn't happen.  So I don't get any sleep then, and then I'm exhausted for my midnight nap and have to fight like I mean to live just to get up and stay awake until four.  So today, I'm trying something new. I couldn't sleep at all at 7, so I took a fairly successful nap at 10.  Also, I'm pushing forward my midnight nap to 1, and I'll still start my core sleep at 4 as usual.  So, I've got my second nap in 20 minutes, and I'll post based on how it goes.

Second Nap

Okay I officially have no idea what is going on with my naps.  I did manage to sleep some during my midnight nap, I think.  The whole experience is just rather strange and outside my experience. Sometimes, I'll have . . . almost a spasm of intensely deep sleep, for just a few seconds or minutes. Other times, I'll wake up, and be startled to be awake, because I genuinely thought I was awake when I had actually been asleep.  That might be the result of slipping between light sleep and wakefulness, maybe? 

As far as the spasms of intense sleep are concerned, I don't know what's going on with those. Sometimes they're associated with weird things, like mathematical formulas.  And for at least the last two naps, hearing the alarm has actually pushed me deeper into sleep for a few seconds - it induces one of those spurts.  

EDIT: I forgot to add that it's a little frustrating, because it's always something very specific that induce those spurts, and I can never remember exactly what it is, even though I'm trying to hang on to it at the time - and I'm aware of this, which I guess makes them extremely lucid intense sleep bursts.  Anybody have a name for this?

Nap

I didn't fall asleep until the last three or four minutes of my nap at 7.  I still feel okay, but I'm not sure I'll be able to really fall asleep at that time with the amount of core sleep I have.  My first idea was to cut my core sleep down to 3 hours, but I think I'm going to give myself a few more days to see if I can learn to fall asleep faster.  I kept getting some really intensely deep waves of sleep at the very end that only lasted a few seconds each.  But it's now 10, and I'm still running fine on those few minutes of intense sleep.  This is utterly fascinating.

It's only Day 9? Damn, I was sure it was later than that

Despite my difficulty getting up after last night's midnight nap, I did in fact stay up until 4, by virtue of Portal.  It took me most of an hour to really get going this morning, but by 10 I was really quite solid.

Then I made a mistake.

I let myself relax during lunch.  I didn't sleep or get in bed or anything, but I let myself lay back in a comfortable recliner for twenty minutes while I talked and checked my email, and I guess that sent the wrong message to my body.  By the time I got up to leave, I was completely exhausted, and it took me most of the rest of the afternoon - until 5 or so - to shake that feeling off.

I'm actually laying in that recliner again as I type this, and feeling my cognition rapidly decline, but it's okay this time, because my nap is coming up in half an hour : )

Holy shit guys

I am tired.  

Yeah, I know, it's an adjustment to polyphasic sleep, you're gonna get tired.  This is the first time it's taken me this long to get going after a nap, though.  I've been up for almost an hour, and I'm only now getting to a state where I'm not in danger of drifting off accidentally.  My eyeballs hurt, and I didn't want to get out of my warm bed with and leave Bryon there.  

This also confirmed a suspicion I've had for some time: I'm much more vulnerable to cold than I used to be.  I am, without exception, freezing when I get up, to the point where I've been getting in the bathtub and turning the hot water on and just letting it run for twenty minutes when I get up from a nap.  Now, I do live in the south, so getting cold easily would not normally be a problem.

Unfortunately, my job is that I run the freezer section of a food warehouse.  It's normal for me to spend several hours a day in a 0-10 degree environment (and yes, that's Fahrenheit).

I also scare much more easily.  I've several times had to fight off sudden, violent urges to shriek like a little girl when something startles me.  I almost did it at a lionfish in Petco.   Haha, thank god I didn't.  That wouldn't have been embarrassing at all.

Ugh, I'm getting tired again.  I need to go find something to do so I don't fall asleep.