Sleeping With Sam and Tamsen

Alarm.

2011-09-21T13:24:00.001-07:00

School has started for me here in Eugene, but since Tamsen and I aren't allowed to move into our new apartment until October 1, I'm staying with some very kind people in our ward. I drove from Portland to Eugene on Monday morning so I could be in my workshop at 8:00, which meant I had to leave Portland around 5:30. I was pretty tired all day, and by the time I arrived at the house where I was going to stay, I just wanted to fall asleep.

So that's more or less what I did. I set the time on the alarm clock next to the bed, set the alarm, and went to sleep around 9.30. I generally have a hard time falling asleep under different circumstances than I'm used to (I didn't fall asleep until 3.00 the night before because I knew I had to get up early, which only made me even more tired), but I figured I was exhausted enough that I wouldn't have any trouble.

Clearly something went wrong, or else I wouldn't be writing about it. I tend to have a hard time separating dreams from reality when I'm tired, and sometimes I act our my dreams with hilarious results. (See also the entirety of this blog.) This was one of those times, so when you read the following paragraphs, pretend that you're in that half-sleeping half-awake state.

My eyes snapped open at 11.30. I heard a beep coming from downstairs. Oh no! When I set the alarm clock next to the bed, I must have set off the alarm system for the house! I jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and ran around the room clutching my hair saying "oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no OH NO oh no oh no oh no" trying to figure out what to do. I knew I only had thirty seconds to disarm the alarm before it started screaming and waking up not only the kind people who gave me a place to stay, but their entire neighborhood.

So I ran down the stairs, still saying "oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh NO oh no," frantically searching for a panel on the wall where I could disarm the alarm. I knew it would be easy to find, since it would have a huge LCD display with a timer counting down to zero. (By my sleep-deprived reckoning, I should still have had fifteen seconds to go, even though I actually spent about two full minutes running around in my room in a panic.) I ran out into the kitchen to see two loaves of bread sitting on top of the oven, having just finished baking.

And then it hit me that the beep I heard must have been the timer for the oven.

And then it hit me that I probably hadn't actually tripped an alarm for the house just by setting an alarm clock.

And then it hit me that I had probably dreamed about tripping an alarm, but didn't realize it wasn't real when I woke up.

And then I was profoundly grateful that no one else had seen me run downstairs in a panic. I slunk back up the stairs, calmed myself down, and went back to my relatively uneventful sleep.

I want you to know, when you hold my hand, you hold my heart

2011-04-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago we couldn't fall asleep, so what did we do? We listed all the phrases we could think of with "heart" in them and replaced the word with "fart."

Here is a smattering of what we came up with:

You're so hard-farted

She wears her fart on her sleeve

Open fart surgery

A member of the lonely farts club

Queen of farts

Let's have a fart to fart chat

This cereal is so fart-smart/fart healthy

Fartburn

Brokenfarted

Wild Farts Can't Be Broken

Fart attack

Be still my fart

Fart of gold

Eat your fart out

A change of fart

I have to follow my fart

Fart and soul

I had my fart set on going to the circus today

Absence makes the fart grow fonder

Cold hands, warm fart

In my fart of farts

Near to my fart

Fart failure

C'mon, have a fart!

Fart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The Planeteers: Earth ,Fire, Wind, Water, and Fart

The American Fart Association

Achy Brakey Fart

The faint of fart

Crazy Fart

My fart's all a flutter

Learned it by fart

Cross my fart and hope to die

The way to a man's fart is through his stomach

Bless your fart

A man after my own fart

Bleeding fart liberals

Farts in Atlantis

A fart-felt apology

The Tell-Tale Fart

Faint fart never won fair lady

Yeah, we're real mature.

plugged up

2010-08-03T09:11:00.001-07:00

I snore, so I got Sam some earplugs to wear. He'll put them in at night only to find them out in the morning, but we know they aren't falling out, because they'll be placed neatly, side by side on his nightstand. Apparently he can take them out in his sleep. He doesn't do it as much now that he knows about it, but they still fall out on their own sometimes. This morning I found one of his earplugs in the bed, so I tried to see if I could put it back in his ear without him noticing. As you can imagine, I was not very successful.

Clementine.

2010-08-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

Tamsen leaves a bit earlier for work than I do, so she wakes me up and gives me a goodbye kiss before she goes. She usually says something goofy, too. This morning, she was singing, "Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my daaaaaaarling Sam-u-el."

I got up enough to give her a kiss and tried to think of something clever I could say back. After a bit of thinking, I settled on, "Don't be lost and gone forever, blah blah blah, blah, blah blah blah." Not that clever, but it would do for first thing in the morning.

Except I didn't hear her respond. I opened my eyes and found that a full 20 minutes had passed since she left.

The sea monkey has my money OR Tales of sleep talkers

2010-07-02T08:56:00.001-07:00

A while ago I came into our room and started talking with Sam, only to find that he wasn't really awake. But he'd been talking back. I didn't know if he was sleep talking or what, so I decided to test him.

Me: Are you awake?

Sam: Yes.

Me: No you're not, you're asleep.

Sam: I am not asleep.

Me: You are too.

Sam (defensively): I am not!

Me: Okay then...what's your middle name?

Sam (a little too quickly): Sam!

Me (laughing): Your name is Sam Sam?

Sam: Wait, no. I meant...

Me: Ha! You are asleep. I knew it!

At this point all the talking made him wake up and he was sulky all over again (this time legitimately so) for being accused of being asleep when he wasn't. One of my sisters talked in her sleep growing up, which was maddening because as I was getting ready for bed I'd ask her something like "did you set the alarm?" and she'd assure me that she had when she actually hadn't. I used to grill her too, asking her if she was actually awake of not, but she was quite convincing and could carry on whole conversations, so I was often taken in. Although, that's nothing compared to my other sister who somehow managed to answer her phone in her sleep and talk to her best friend for 15 minutes before she realized anything was amiss. It went something like this-

H: Hello?

A: Hey, were you asleep?

H: (groggily defensive, because she actually is asleep) No! I'm awake.

A: (confused) Oh. Okay. How was the beach trip?

H went on to tell her all about the ward beach trip before introducing the subject of tigers.

H: And then we were divided into groups and we were the tigers.

A: Wait, what? After you got back you were tigers?

H: What? No, the tigers turned into T-shirts.

A: The tigers were T-shirts?

H: The T-shirts were T-shirts!

A: What T-shirts?

It was at this point that my sister woke up to find herself in mid conversation with a phone in her hand, and she very legitimately asked "Wait, what T-shirts?"

Tuesday snooze day

2009-05-08T16:34:00.001-07:00

The other morning I was awakened by what I thought was the sound of the garbage truck coming down our street (the garbage man comes on Tuesday). Sam later informed me that in my half-awake state I muttered "Oh. It's Tuesday" before going back to sleep. Unfortunately it was Wednesday and Sam stayed awake for hours trying to figure out what day it actually was.

Step on a crack.

2009-04-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Conversation between Tamsen and I after I accidentally and not on purpose pushed too hard on her back while she was laying in bed reading:

SAM: Sorry for breaking your back.
TAMSEN: Yeah, you may as well be out stepping on sidewalk cracks.
(pause)
SAM: You're not my mother.
TAMSEN: Thanks, P.D.

Old shoes.

2009-02-15T21:10:00.001-08:00

Tamsen and I were laying in bed talking, when I felt a burp well up. (This happens, single people. Don't over-romanticize your dreams of married life by imagining a world devoid of bodily functions.) I let it out, and almost instantaneously saw an errant hair on my pillow, which I blew away. Poor Tamsen had her mouth open as I accidentally and not on purpose blew my burp into it.

"That tasted like old shoes full of pepperoni," she commented.

Sawing logs.

2009-02-04T10:52:00.000-08:00

Tamsen came down with a cold yesterday, so she wasn't feeling so great. We did our best to pump her full of chemicals (cough drops, Nyquil, etc.), but she was still pretty stuffed up when we headed to bed. I should have thought about the potential consequences of that before falling asleep, but I was pretty tired, and thus just dropped off.

Around 4.30, I was woken up by what can best be described as the sound of someone shoving live weasels down a watery drain. Burble clonk snorfle. Morfin slobber chong. What the crap was that? I opened my eyes to see Tamsen sleeping blissfully on her back, emitting noises that could have woken the dead. It was hardly her fault, since her nose was all stuffed up, but holy cow already. Normally if I jostle her a bit, she rolls over, but after several attempts of bouncing up and down, picking up and dropping her pillow with her head on it, and running into her, nothing was working. I ended up abandoning ship and sleeping on our couch. I couldn't hear Tamsen anymore, but I ended up having to deal with our surprisingly loud clock all morning. Lovely.

Apparently Tamsen woke up a couple of times when I was pushing her around, but she assumed it was because I was snoring too loudly. Good grief.

Call me Pandora

2009-01-09T10:05:00.000-08:00

I've been having some very strange dreams lately, and by strange I mean mundane. For instance, a few weeks ago I had a dream that consisted of nothing more than me working in a factory. I stood by a conveyor belt that had boxes on it and as they came by it was my job to take an exacto knife and cut open a box. First I'd slice through the tape on the top, then along the sides, and finally I'd open the flaps to make sure I'd cut all the tape. And that's all I did all night in my dream was open box after box after box. After box. After box. I guess it's my version of counting sheep.

Then two nights ago I had a dream that entailed me mixing a giant tub of egg salad with the longest rubber spatula that doesn't really exist because it was a dream. And every so often Sam would come by and add some cornmeal to make the egg salad look yellower and I'd have to mix it in and get rid of the white patches I could see of unmixed egg salad. I was strongly reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin is counting rocks in his dream and bores himself awake.

Last night I broke my streak of boring dreams with a crazy dream that involved winning $36,000 and shooting a home intruder in the head. Apparently my dreams are boring in order to save up for more exciting ones every once in awhile.

Concave

2009-01-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

This Christmas break we stayed at Tamsen's house, since their guest room has a slightly larger bed than mine does (i.e., queen vs. full). However, when we arrived at her house, we found that the frame of the bed was bent outward, leaving the bed in a bit of a U-shape. It wasn't bad enough to warrant any sort of complaint, though, so we figured that was that.

The trouble, though, is that while sleeping in the bed, one tends to roll toward the center, making things difficult for the second tenant of the bed. More than once, I woke up to find Tamsen nearly shoving me out of the bed because she'd rolled to the middle. One time, I decided to gently nudge her back to her side by bumping into her. Nothing happened, so I tried again, this time a little harder. Still nothing. Eventually, I was really throwing myself at her, over and over, which she later told me was the point where she woke up. Somewhat groggily, she made her way back over to her side of the bed, and I rolled back to mine in peace.

It all seemed like a good idea at the time, but the image of me repeatedly rolling into Tamsen at high speed thinking "MOOOOOVE" seems pretty ridiculous now.

An elephant never forgets

2008-12-26T16:51:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-12-10T12:01:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-11-28T11:56:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-11-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-12T15:22:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-11-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-10-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-10-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

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.