Over the last few days I have had a number of interesting things happen to me.
First, I had a nightmare the other night. Like the kind someone might have as a 9 or 10 years old, sounds silly when I describe it to other people but scary as shit when it’s actually happening. Here are the details.
I’m in a room like a hospital room way up high in a glass building (maybe the 60th floor). It’s a corner room so all around me I can see sky and little tiny buildings. I’m not sure who is in the room with me but there are several people, whom I am supposed to be protecting. I have my back to the glass when all of a sudden someone shouts “Oh my god what is that thing!” It appears that something has landed on the balcony outside the windows. I feel the hairs on my neck rise and the ‘fight or flight instinct’ is kicking into high gear. There is a sliding glass door to the balcony so I dive at it in order to keep it closed or lock it or something. Needless to say the beast is at the door before me and it’s huge, menacing, snarling, and hairy. I yell out “It’s a giant hairy otter!”
Now at this point I must interject that I know this is ridiculous. The beast does not look nothing like a giant hairy otter, nor does the thought of a giant hairy otter disturb me so, on with the story.
The beast lurches through the door and immediately envelops me in its flailing arms. At this point I awaken to the sound of me yelling out in my sleep. Mind you this is no ordinary, manly, fighting the dragon and saving the maiden kinda yell. No sir! This sounds more like a wounded, sulking animal kind of whimper or like a distorted version of a dog whining at the back door. What ever the case I awaken my wife with the noise and she is shaking me asking if I’m ok! HELL NO I’m not OK! I'm lying here in bed, whining like a two year old, in a pool of sweat, muscles seized up, and worst of all I just got my ass kicked by a giant hairy otter! Would you be ok! Jeez, some people.
Secondly, I had a realization tonight that when I get up in the middle of the night with my wife to feed the baby and change her diaper my brain remains on my pillow while my body leaves the room. Here is how I came to this conclusion (with my wife’s help).
I’m sitting on the floor in front of the nursing duo doing what I would call "thinking". Specifically about the past sleeping habits of our 4 month old child who is now using her crib as a race track; scooting around on her back in her sleep wearing away the hair on the back of her head. (My wife would call this spacing out and tell me to go back to bed) As I am thinking these deep thoughts my wife starts pumping her arm up and down like a kid would do in the car if she wanted a semi to honk its horn. I sit there gaping at her. All thoughts have left my mind. What the hell is she doing? At this point my wife looks at me and says “what the hell are you doing?” Now I’m still trying to shift mental modes from the ponderings of ancient infant sleep patterns to bizarre upper body movements of breast feeding mothers so no words escape my lips, which by the way are open wide enough that my wife claims she was waiting for a cave swallow to fly into our house and immediately set up residence in my yap. In the end her arm apparently had an itch and she was trying to find a way to scratch it without disturbing the feeding baby. Duh, where was my brain! Of course an itch! I should have known this was the international sign for “I have an itch on my arm and I need some assistance in scratching it”. Needless to say I was still confused by the time I rejoined my brain in bed where I promptly collapsed upon it in an effort to rejoin it in LaLa Land.
It’s amazing how many things one can accomplish and learn when the gray matter between the ears flips the sign on the door to closed for the evening.
