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.

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.