Sleep is a magical thing. You lay down after a long day with the overwhelming and intimidating issues of the day on your mind, and (usually) within 5-15 minutes you are swept away into dream land for 7-9 hours and when you rise from this marvelous slumber you feel refreshed and ready to deal with the day, but what happens during those mysterious hours that you are so unavailable to the world? Even though those hours seem quite boring and short to you they are actually action packed and filled with brainwaves that would keep any scientist glued to his/her seat. When you are awake beta brainwaves are firing through your head these waves are small and fast and are the waves that keep you alert enough to deal with all of the problems that come throughout the day. When you lay down or are sitting in a resting position and are doing a relaxing activity your brain starts to transition to alpha waves which are similar to beta waves but are higher in amplitude and don’t come quite as fast. After staying with alpha waves for a while you start to feel the first stages of sleep and your brain waves keep coming in slower, and higher. Those waves are called theta, and then later throughout your sleep delta. Now all these waves come in when you are in your NREM sleep, in all stages 1, 2, 3, & 4. When you finally enter in REM sleep (which is where most of your vivid and wild dreams come from) your brain does a very interesting thing and initiates beta waves again. If you want a way to better understand these waves and their relationship to each other please reference “Sleep” by Steven W. Lockley, and Russell G. Foster on page 11 there is a chart that explains these waves very simply.

The predominating sound in the room is what actually is a small click every second keeping the steady pace of time, but to Abi it is the thundering and continuous reminder of each precious second of sleep time that is not being spent asleep. Each one of those obnoxious clicks, and ticks of that presumingly innocent bed bath and beyond wallclock just points the finger of blame at her saying "if only you hadn't had sugar so late at night you would be asleep right now" or "if you hadn't of taken that short nap today in dreamland you would be" but all that guilt and blame being spread around means nothing for it will not get her to sleep any faster. So take a deep breath girl and go to sleep for tomorrow will be full enough of its own troubles.