Joel is trying to disabuse me of the notion that sleepiness is a merit-based system. I didn’t realize until recently that I felt this way.
It didn’t start until Milo was born and I entered an alternate reality of true sleep deprivation. It’s kind of funny at first (haha, I thought the stuffed turtle was the baby!) but, especially when you have to go back to work, it becomes rather debilitating. For one thing, I would get very dizzy. And, much like when you’re sick, I felt like anyone I talked to needed to know about it so they could excuse my fogginess.
From that point on, whenever a friend or coworker or anyone without a baby has told me that they’re sleepy, it triggers the following (silent) responses: 1. Bitch, please; 2. Damn it, Angela, you used to get sleepy before you had a baby. Remember insomnia?; and 3. Okay, could this person actually be sleepy? Why would someone without kids be sleepy? Then I think, 4. All sleepiness prior to the baby was my fault for being too carefree and injudicious with my evenings. I had no right to complain about being sleepy! And then I have a final reaction: 5. You are one of those parents who thinks they’re better than everyone else. Don’t be a jerk.
Unfortunately, that sympathetic part of the reaction doesn’t extend to Joel, because whenever he tells me he’s tired, my mind immediately starts calculating the truth of the statement:
(Total hours between bedtime and rising) – (middle of the night wakings) + (reason he stayed up later than me last night) = (total possible sleepiness credits)
and I usually conclude with: “You should’ve gone to bed when I did instead of playing around on the computer. You’re not sleepy. I’m sleepy.”
To which he invariably responds, “It doesn’t matter if I deserve to be sleepy! I’m sleepy!” to which I’m like, “It’s an insult to me for you to claim you’re sleepy!”
He compares “You’re not tired!” to telling someone they’re not cold based strictly on a thermostat reading. He finds it pretty ridiculous. Nevertheless, he has taken to prefacing “I’m tired” with “Okay, so obviously I have no right to say this, and of course you’re more tired than I am, but…”
I really don’t want to be one of those holier-than-thou parents. Friends, trust me: I really do think you’re entitled to be sleepy. I guess I just want it to be clear that my chronic lack of sleep is dulling the edges of my brain, making me just slightly less interesting and articulate than I used to be. I need you to understand that because I don’t want you to think that I’m just dumb and boring now. I envy you your ability to make up for lost sleep tonight, but I don’t hold it against you.
I mean, unless you stayed up too late playing on the computer.
