20140426.0718

My wife and I are more or less naturally on different sleep schedules. I have repeatedly noted being a morning person--even if I do sleep in from time to time. My wife is a night owl. Early in our relationship, this caused some unpleasant friction; we had a fair bit of time to spend together, but she would start grumpy and I would get cranky. Over time, we have negotiated the difference, and it has worked out fairly well for us.

The difference has had benefits with Ms. 8, too. Because I am up in the morning, I am able to take care of a number of things that my wife had been doing so that she can take care of Ms. 8 later on. Because my wife is up in the evening, I can find my bed fairly early many nights, so I can get several hours of sleep without interruption. As it happens, there are only a few hours where my wife and I are both naturally or habitually out, so there are only a few hours during which caring for Ms. 8 requires particular effort. My wife and I both get almost enough sleep to be comfortable, and actually enough to be fully functional, and that has been helpful over these past months.

I am sure that there is some kind of metaphorical reading possible in there, something that conforms to somewhat traditional associations of masculinity and the sun, femininity and the moon, and the accord between them as key to the stability of the cosmos. It would not be the first time that the home has been read as the universe in miniature, of course, nor that geocentrism has governed the iteration of an idea. And to consider such a thing, I have to wonder how Ms. 8 fits into the celestial systems. If I am the sun, and my lovely wife the moon, what planet is Ms. 8? Is she Terra, slowly building from initial trauma to the ability to bear life? Is she Venus--a question I ask after having changed certain of her diapers? Is she Neptune in an extension of the pun on her name? Or, rather, is she some new world altogether?

Such questions are the kinds of things I contemplate at odd times, and, truly, most times are odd. It is for such reasons that life in the academy attracts me as it does; only in the storied and derided ivory tower are such musings not only accepted but encouraged. Despite my uncomfortable chair in the basement or the lobby level of the edifice (and why ivory, that tower?), I am attracted to my place within it. Thus I continue to seek a more permanent position in it than I have at present, hoping that I can find a better room than I now have and not have to move again.