Sleep is Overrated

I think about sleep alot. It is my job.
So I'm sitting here summarizing journal articles in preparation for writing my paper to be published someday, and thinking about how frustrated I am with my own sleep. Last night I was cold when I went to bed. Not unusual for me. I tend to get cold around bedtime. But I couldn't get sleepy. It was about midnight, and I was finally starting to warm up a bit.
Then my dog starts barking like the house is on fire, and I can't figure out why. I put her up in my bed and try to cuddle her and settle her down, but nothing is working. She keeps jumping off the bed and barking. I figure she's barking at my other dog because she gets territorial around bedtime. So I get out of bed and call her. She comes to me and I scoop her up and bring her to bed again. She settles for a few minutes but I'm cold still and can't sleep.
She jumps down again and starts barking. I am frustrated by this point, and leave her. But mama Dukes gets out of bed and goes downstairs only to find that the big dog is locked outside. I guess we didn't check to see if she had come in after peeing.

So, I forgive my little dog for barking. She was just protecting her big sister.

I finally fell asleep around 2am.

But I dream. I almost hate dreaming because it feels like I'm not sleeping. It was a bad dream too about my dog going psycho. I can't control her and I get scared. I wake up almost in tears at 2:30am, and lie in bed cuddling my dog. I love her, and it's not her fault I had a bad dream about her. But the weird thing is, I have had this dream before. The exact same one, with very few changes. It was at the end of the dream that I realized this, and somehow became partially conscious of the fact that I was dreaming. At that point I can wake myself up, because I have practice (from lucid dreaming). I am awake still at 3:45. I didn't look at the clock after that. On purpose because it frustrates me. But I eventually fell asleep again.

I slept until 6:26am. Maybe 3 hours over the night. So I lie in bed hoping to fall asleep again. I'm working from home today, so I could sleep more. But the house is active now and I listen to the conversations happening downstairs. I can't sleep.

I crawl out of bed annoyed at nothing at 7:16am. I start working, and think about a theory. The theory (that many people still believe) is that dreaming is your brains way of sorting out memories from the day. You basically get random firing of neurons (cells) in your brain to consolidate memory, and eliminate wasted space being taken up (memories that aren't important, if there is such a thing).

And it occurs to me...how do we have re-occurring dreams then? If it's random, why would the same "random" sequence of events happen twice or more? Obviously that theory doesn't hold, and sleep people are wasting their time. Though that part about incorporating things from the day can stand, because my dog can be a bit psycho sometimes....