An elephant never forgets

The other day I woke up to the sound of elephants. I thought that there were 5 of them specifically -it was early and I was a bit confused, but I distinctly heard the trumpeting of elephants so I turned my attention to our upstairs neighbors who are usually very needlessly noisy. They have rock band, an excellent stereo system and a tendency to use them both when we're trying to sleep. So I groggily turned to listen and thought I heard not only elephants, but very rhythmic elephants. There would be two counts of silence, a very distinct trumpeting, and then it would repeat -I was reminded of the scene from the Jungle Book where the elephants are marching. Did the neighbors have some sort of elephant edition of rock band?

I turned to Sam to see if he was awake, only to find that he was the one doing all the trumpeting. He'd breathe in for two seconds and then he'd exhale with a lot of fanfare -I'd found my elephant. Safari over. I thought about getting something to record the noise with -it was quite impressive -but decided to stay in bed. I went to sleep comforted by the fact that I'm not the only sleep wheezer in the family and making plans to patent my elephant edition of rock band.

Time.

Last night, Tamsen and I were talking about looking at the clock when we wake up. Like most people, we have trouble telling exactly what time it is when we first get up, and usually badly misjudge the actual time. (True story: once, when I was in middle school, I woke up, looked at the clock, and decided the time was Saturday. Turns out it was actually Tuesday, and I was extremely late for my bus.) Sometimes our efforts to determine the time turns the numbers on the clock into different shapes (such as snakes). My particular problem, however, has been long recurring and I still haven't learned.

You see, when I first wake up, I can check what time it is WITHOUT ACTUALLY OPENING MY EYES. That's right. Early in the morning, I can see through my eyelids, provided I'm looking at a clock. More than once, I've woken up, realized how tired I was, and thought to myself, "I'll just check the clock through my eyelids this morning." Invariably, the time is several hours earlier than I actually need to get up. And then, after a minute or so, I think, "Nah, I'd better go ahead and look with my eyes open, just to make sure." Strangely enough, the time is usually vastly different, and usually requires me to leap out of bed and scramble to get ready on time.

The strange thing is that it never strikes me as strange that I can see clocks through my eyelids until long after I've been awake. I'll think about it later and realize that I'm bordering on insane in the mornings. Unless, somehow, I really do have a super power, in which case I really ought to put together a costume or something.

You know it.

Spirits were high throughout the day yesterday, but once we got home, both Tamsen and I were pretty much exhausted. Too much turkey and pie had finally caught up with us. As I crawled into bed next to her, I said, "Are you ready for some hard-core sleeping action?" Tamsen tried to reply, "You know it!", but got derailed by a yawn and instead said something along the lines of "Hoo note!"

Somehow, it wasn't quite as hard-core as either of us were hoping it might be.

Boring.

People keep asking us - often - to update this blog. Apparently our sleeping habits are pretty popular across the interwebs. The only thing is, we're not usually funny when we go to sleep. Normally we loaf and lay in bed until we fall asleep, but I decided to dig deep and see if I could come up with anything amusing.

Tamsen tends to sleep warmer than I do, meaning she finds herself uncomfortably hot more often than I do. Our apartment is pretty warm, probably because our radiators are stuck on high or at least on and we don't know how to turn them off. (Fortunately, gas is free!) Occasionally I'll roll over to find Tamsen kicking and scootching (sp?), trying to get comfortable and cool. I'll ask what's up, and she'll reply that she's too warm. One time, I said, trying to be comforting, "Aw, I'm sorry you're so hot." And then, realizing what I said, I repeated, "I mean, sorry you're so hot," doing my best to come up with a sultry voice.

We thought it was funny, at least, but I can see how it might be off-putting to someone else. Like I said, I'm digging deep here.

Wheezer

So this morning Sam informed me that I'm a sleep wheezer.

me: What?!
sam: You where wheezing in your sleep again
me: again?
sam: You wheeze sometimes, but all I have to do to get you to stop is roll over you

That confused me, because I'm a fairly light sleeper and I think I would notice if someone were to steamroll me in my sleep. I once woke up because someone was using a tape dispenser outside of my closed bedroom door.

sam:Well, not roll over you, I more roll into you

and he demonstrated by getting back in bed and rolling until he nudged up against me. That or he deliberately shifts around to wake me up. Apparently this makes the wheezing abate.Ten months in he tells me this, that I'm some sort of nighttime asthmatic.

sam: But don't worry about it -I probably make weird noises too
me: I've never heard a peep out of you, but then again I probably can't hear you over my incessant wheezing

You would think that Maranda would have told me I wheeze in my sleep -we did live together for the last couple of years, but then again she's a sleep laugher, so how could she have heard my wheezing if I was awake because of her sleep laughing? Or maybe she was sleep laughing at my sleep wheezing.

me: well which side was I sleeping on?
sam: You were on your back. That probably explains it -you must have been breathing through your mouth

and with that he went off to take his shower while I attempted to recreate my sleeping conditions and see how much I wheezed while pretending to be asleep while on my back. The most I got was a faint nose whistle.

Brains.

Slight prologue: Tamsen has always slept with a couple of crocheted (?) blankets/shawls that she lovingly refers to as her "Martys". She's always had them, so she's very used to sleeping with them. You know the kind.

So last night, we were lying in bed, and I noticed one of the Martys behind her head with a bit of her hair over it. It almost looked as though the Marty was actually her scalp, and I told her as much. To me, it looked like either a) her head was made of dough, or b) her brains were oozing out. In response, Tamsen made a sort of squishing sound.

I paused for a moment, then asked, "Wait, are you making a brain sound?" She was.

I'm not sure which is stranger - that she chose to make a sound to represent brains, or that I immediately understood that it was a brain sound.

Snakes.

The other night, Tamsen and I were laying in bed, trying to fall asleep, when I hear giggling from her side of the bed. "Snakes!" she yelled. "There's a couple of snakes, and they're looking at each other! Hee!"

It took some deciphering to figure out that she was talking about the numbers on the clock, in which the digital 5 and 2 looked like snakes standing on their tails, looking at each other. I recreated it as seen below:

It stands for reserve

Sometimes when we are going to sleep but aren't actually tired we end up playing word games. Like trying to come up with words that are 6 letters long and have a double letter in the middle but that would still be a word if you switched the first letter and the middle letters. For instance, the word lopped would become polled, and tipped would be pitted. Things like that. Several times we've rhymed things with the phrase "There's a bear in my eye" and you have to sing your response- please don't stare at my pie, if I married you I would die, why's there a knife in my thigh?, etc. Or there's last night where neither of us could remember what the R in ROTC stood for so we volleyed back and forth with things like rickshaw, Rambo, renegade, rambunctious, ruthless, rhino, right-of-way, rotten, until we'd listed all the R words we knew. I think I won with Rhomboid.

Dream Cheater.

More than once since marrying Tamsen, I've had dreams in which I've cheated on her. It's important to note, however, that I've never intentionally cheated on her. For whatever reason, I've either not known that there's anything wrong with sleeping with other women (making me a whore, but at least well-intentioned), or been forced against my will to marry someone else.

I had a cheating dream the other night. The first thing about the dream I can remember was being told I was going to marry someone else. "What about Tamsen?" I asked, confused. "What about her? Come over here and get married," they responded. Somewhat bewildered, I went to wherever they were taking me and got married. This new woman seemed like a less than able replacement for Tamsen. I don't remember much, but I remember her having long blond hair and a somewhat vacant look on her face. (Apologies if you think that's you.) We ended up going to our apartment and watching a movie, where she sort of flopped all over the place and fell asleep, while Tamsen gave me a look as if to say, "Seriously? They made you marry this?"

I woke up terrified that I was going to find this strange woman next to me in bed. Fortunately, I didn't. Tamsen got a good laugh out of it when I told her the next day. She tries to call me "DC" (for Dream Cheater), but for whatever reason, it doesn't quite stick. Not that I'm complaining.

I sleep with a bat next to my bed in case someone else ends up in there. You know. Just in case.

Fighting for the covers.

Since we're different heights and sleep in different positions, the covers on our bed tend to slip and slide around at night. They usually tend to favor me, so Tamsen wakes up at night and tugs on the covers to get them back. (Usually, I'm less than receptive.) In fact, it's to the point where Tamsen has trained herself to pull at the sheets when she feels them sliding away from her.

A couple of nights ago, however, I woke up to find that I was the one who ended up without the covers. Tamsen had three of the corners, and I only had one covering my middle. I floundered about for a bit, trying to find my missing cover, and eventually gave up and started tugging at the sheets. Tamsen, still asleep, felt the sheets being pulled away from her and started pulling back. Not to be outdone, I pulled even harder. We ended up in a bit of a tug-of-war until Tamsen sort of woke up and realized that half of the blanket had flopped over her and onto the floor. Somewhat sheepishly, she let me have my blanket again. Of course, I wasn't happy about this, so I flopped back to my side of the bed, cursing inwardly. As I went back to sleep, I thought to myself, "Freaking Tamsen Three-Corners," congratulating myself on the clever, alliterative insult I'd come up with.

It was only after I'd woken up that I realized that "Tamsen Three-Corners" was neither clever nor alliterative. She, of course, found this tremendously funny when I told her the following morning.