The sea monkey has my money OR Tales of sleep talkers

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.