Dispatches From Right Now
September 17, 2006
(Hint! "Right Now" equals 1:32 a.m.)
We both fell asleep on the couch. We do that a lot. We're either very lazy about that damned flight of steps, closet narcoleptics or just hopeless drunks.
Suddenly, Jason gets up and enters the nursery. There is much stomping. Possibly some glomping. He exits, slamming the door behind him and comes back to the couch just as the first screams erupt.
I ask him what in the sam bloody hill he was doing in there.
"What?" He looks at me like I'm crazy.
I get up and enter the nursery. Noah is standing up in his crib, howling. I pat his back until he calms down. As I creep back out, I trip over Jason's shoes.
I go back to the living room and repeat my question. What in the sam bloody fucking hill was he doing in there? And what's with the shoes?
"What?" His face is all, "CRAZY TALK. GOING BACK TO SLEEP. MARRIAGE EQUALS CONSTANT STRIFE."
Noah is screaming again. I brush my teeth and wait the Ferber-approved five minutes before re-entering to comfort him again.
Jason still hasn't moved from the couch. I shake him.
"What?"
"Dude. What the hell?"
"What?"
I repeat my accusation (YOU ARE A CRAZY LOUD SHOE-TAKER-OFFER WHO WOKE THAT BABY AND IN SOME CULTURES THAT IS GROUNDS FOR RUNNING YOU OVER WITH A CAR OR BUS OR HORSE-DRAWN CHARIOT OF SOME KIND) several times. I hear Noah turn on his crib aquarium and finally settle down to the strains of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as played by the Dying C Battery Orchestra.
Jason finally wakes up. I may or may not have kicked him. He starts muttering some nonsense about a contract. A customer contract. Don't argue with the contact, because he got it signed and everything.
I shake him and repeat my nagging tale of FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES OF CRYING BABY WOE one last time and point to his bare feet, like AH HA! LATE-NIGHT SHERLOCK STRIKES AGAIN and then I throw up my hands and go upstairs to bed.
Five minutes later, he wakes up.
"Hey." he calls up. "Where are my shoes?"
hehe i believe i am the first to comment..
anyways i have never commented before, but i love your blog, i spent about 2 hours reading your archives last week instead of homework...yours in one of the few blogs out there that actually makes me laugh out loud.
Wow, that's a classic! I laugh at what MY husband says/does in his sleep, but your husband is way cooler!
My husband started occasionally singing in his sleep a year or so ago. The song usually is gibberish, except for the word "raccoon" repeatedly in it. The first few times it was all, hah, that's funny, he's so cute, blah blah blah.
Now I just want to punch that raccoon in the face, PETA be damned.
LOL
My husband was rather irritated with me last night because I was "cracking up" (in my sleep). He wanted me to tell him what was so funny, but by the time we were having breakfast, I'd forgotten.
I do remember laughing though.
Hehe, that's totally the kinda thing I'd do. Poor you and poor Noah. Kid musta been well freaked out! Lol.
Hope you've since got some sleep! xx
I am one of the chosen sleep-walker/talker-types, too. Have freaked out many a bedmate.
My wife recites grocery lists in her sleep. Luckily, she only wakes me up doing it.
That sequence was SO like Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw -- aka My Fair Lady.
Aren't sleepwalkers fun? Sounds like he may be a little stressed - that's when I tend to sleepwalk too. I once walked out to our living room and asked my husband if I should go to court in the morning (I'm a lawyer or anything court-related) and then when he answered me (with a confused "what the hell") I yelled at him to shut up. I'm a pleasant sleepwalker to deal with for sure.
My boyfriend has the worst night terrors ever, and he often sleepwalks. He's woken up while setting up a PA for a band, he's woken me up countless times to warn me about giant moose heads/people at the end of the bed with guns "Jem, get up! Get up quick!" and he's jumped on top of me with all his effort while I was fast asleep in his effort to get out of the bed to avoid the crazy guy at the end of the bed. I almost died of terror, it took ages for my heart to go back to normal. It happens at least a couple of times a week. Sometimes I just have conversations with him while he's sleeping - it's fun and he makes absolutely no sense!
Haha. (Although it's probably not that amusing to you right now, in the middle of the night)
I once had to share a bed with one of my friends and she sat bolt upright in bed, staring at me and said "What tickets do you have?"
When I asked her what she was talking about, she repeated it, and THEN she said "I can't believe you have better tickets than me!" and rolled over in this big huff.
I have never been game to invite her to a ticketed event ever since.
Dying C Battery Orchestra. You are so funny.
That is weird! My oldest son sleepwalks, but it would freak me out if my husband did. And there must be NO WAKING the baby with stomping OR glomping.
At least Noah went back to sleep. Kaitlyn would have needed a diaper change, a bottle, the rocking chair, etc.
GOSH I miss being married. ;)
. . . settle down to the strains of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, as played by the Dying C Battery Orchestra.
Haha, we've got the Dying Double A Battery Orchestra here!
I definetely would have drove over him with the car. And an all-female jury would have acquitted you for sure.
BTW, are you planning the party? ;)
Haha! My Jase often comes up with randomness in his sleep - although I don't mention it, since I'm twice as bad myself.
Had to giggle at the shoes though.
-Aly
Amy, you're my blog-hero! How come you're so damn funny even in the middle of the night?
In my house, it's me who wakes the dead with impromptu conversation while being sound asleep. And I have been known to wander as well. Once I awoke while on my way to the copy machine in my office, except it was really my bedroom.
I'm so jealous of anyone who can sleep that deeply. I haven't had a deep sleep in about 11 months. Come to think of it, isn't it a coincidence that my baby is 11 months old? Maybe not. But husband here can also sleep through that stuff.
I think I would have killed him right there. No one gets to live if the baby is crying
Boy, am I glad I never do anything embarrassing when I'm asleep.
Ahem.
I would have committed murder. And NO JURY WOULD HAVE CONVICTED ME (as long as the jury was completely made up of moms of small children).
We made a pact once that anything said during the witching hours of midnight to 7 am was not to be held against the speaker, after one very bad night with a newborn who was struggling with day/night confusion, my husband came back into the room, and in a sleep-deprived, frustrated rage, said, "You gave birth to the stupidest baby on the planet."
I decided I could either hold that against him for the rest of his life, or keep my mouth shut and carry on.
Men are weird.
I'm the one in our family that does the sleep-crazies. Mostly I just threaten divorce when he wakes me up off the couch and tells me to go to bed. Now he's learned and he just leaves me on the couch. But that pisses me off also.
Marriage...fun times!
As one who often walks and talks in her sleep, I have extra sympathy for Jason on this one. It sucks he woke up the baby and was so weird, but usually that sort of weirdness is caused by stress.
At least you didn't make fun of him, like my husband does to me when I say/do bizarre things while sleeping. That is definitely grounds for divorce, if not murder.
I'm just glad he had the urge to take off his shoes, not go to the bathroom.
I sort of sympathize with Jason (except for the making the baby cry thing...that is just wrong). Lately I've been waking from a deep sleep convinced that there is something I need to find that does not in fact exist. Then I spend the next several minutes turning my room upside down in the search until I finally am alert enough to figure out that I did take my birth control pill, and that there is no other component that I missed. Or that there is no one in my apartment that is going to see the BOB on my bedside table.
I would hate to hear what a shrink has to say about that!
Robby peed while asleep in the nursery armoire once. And then looked at me like I was stuffing frozen grapes down his pants when I went in and slapped his back in an attempt to shake him out of it.
Pee is quieter than shoes, though, so Nolan slept through it.
My thought was similar to Kristin's. So, on the upside, at least he didn't mistake Noah's room for the bathroom.
My ex husband once mistook my moms geranium OUTSIDE for the bathroom that was the door next to our bedroom. Mom got an eyeful when she went to see why the front door was open. Drinking bad.... :)
Hee. I love it when my husband sleeptalks (and thank goodness we don't have a baby yet because I'm sure that it would cease to be funny once he started waking up the kid). The other night, he started shouting about "Tiny little robot arms!"
He does this sort of thing regularly, and it's way better than watching tv. Which is good because we can't afford cable anyway.
LOL!
Yeah for weekend posts! So funny...apparently he got Noah to sign some kind of contract! Too cute. Happy sleeping in!
I am too familiar with that dying C battery symphony. They perform at my house with great frequency - amazing how they get around!
Too funny! I once had to chase my roommate down as she scuttered around the apartment saying, "The gypsie's are stealing our Christmas presents." This was in early July. Sleepwalking is very strange indeed.
That was pretty good. I was picturing the whole event taking place and the look on Jasons face was halarious! hahaha Poor Noah, probably scared him shitless!
HAHA!! That was quite funny and immensely entertaining. At least the contract was signed.
my husband usually gets up and puts his shoes by the bed in his sleep. and has woken up while electric shaving in a dark hotel bathroom on a business trip.
so i feel you.
i've demanded he never go get a knife in his sleep or i'll be pissed.
Drunks. You all are DRUUUUNKS.
Fun drunks.
I (heart) marriage.
My husband does hilarious things in his sleep. One recent morning when he was still in a deep sleep, I startled him by sneezing. He jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen and picked up the buzzer phone thingy that connects to our doorman. I was sitting there at the table and was like, "WHAT are you doing?" He said (clearly still asleep) that we had a delivery, did I want him to sign for it? We obviously have a small apartment for me to "wake" him up by sneezing in the kitchen. I do have him pretty well-trained to sign for deliveries, though. :)
My 2 year old sleepwalks and while he usually just screams and yells and walks around and demands food while he is sleeping, sometimes he does some funny stuff. Funny if you count waking me up four times a night and kicking me and screaming at me to make you some food funny. Good thing he's cute!
no, really. just curious how exactly you killed him after that. no. really. how.
My husband tells me I have to stop reading this for my health, because I'm laughing (to the point of tears) so hard reading the entry AND the comments that I can't even breathe.
i do that all the damn time, so i sympathize with jason. it's a freakish little quirk.
two nights ago, i blurted out
"I WILL CHANGE THE FONT"
right as my boyfriend was falling asleep.
thank god i have someone to tell me all the ridiculous things i say in the middle of the night. the best one ever was:
"I MADE THE DECISION TO GO OVER TO THE DARK SIDE LAST NIGHT WHILE I WAS AT DINNER AT PERKINS."
That was awsome.
My husband and I do a lot of sleep talking, the most anoying being when he wakes me up to tell me something nonsensical and then doesn't remember the dream well enough to exoplain it to me!
Although... two nights ago he woke up pissed because I had just slapped him in the eye... fair's fair I guess!
I think it's funny how many commenters were also awake in the middle of the night. Sleepwalkers unite!
LMAO!!
I loved this tale very much. Though I am quite sorry you had to deal with it.
Once, my boyfriend, the whitest of white boys, started talking sort of ghetto/thuggish in his sleep. It was mostly gangsta nonsense, and then he said, very clearly, "Why you cryin' an' shit? Oh, for reals?"
OMG too fuckin funny......
Total grounds for kicking him at LEAST once...if not twice!
Are you sure it wasn't the huge dancing octopus?
A few weeks into our marriage, I woke up to the sounds of my beloved husband strumming his acoustic guitar. It was 3am and I had work the next day. I asked him what the fuck he was doing & told him to come back to bed. The next morning, I asked why in the hell he was playing the guitar in the middle of the night. He was all "huh?" and really had no clue what I was talking about. Needless to say, the guitar was moved to the other room from then on.