Parasomnia

A while ago, Angela over at According To Angela was participating in an attempt to blog every day for a month. I thought it was a pretty neat idea, but I missed the boat that time around. I think I'm going to give it a shot now since I have to make up for lost blog time. Well, almost. I'm going to try and blog at least once every weekday for the month of June (I think have ADD on the weekends). I wonder if quality will diminish with quantity. Probably.

Last night I woke up at 3 am to a thunderstorm happening pretty much right on top of my house. The flash of lightning lit up our room (despite our "black out curtains") and the thunder grumbled right along with it - no counting between flash and sound. It was so loud I got up in a hazy stupor to attempt to close my bedroom window. It took me about 3 minutes of pushing the window with all my strength under curtains and without lifting the blinds all the way up to realize that the window was already closed.

Once my brain caught up with my body, I pulled apart the curtains and lifted the corner of our blinds to look outside. Now I'm not sure that my vision wasn't affected by the half dose of NyQuil I took last night for a stuffy nose, but everything outside was... pink. It wasn't a pretty My Little Pony happy rainbow cloud pink either. It was this gross watered down blood shade of puke pink. The clouds, the street, the cars - everything was tinted this nauseating pink. The lightning flashed again and for a second everything was super bright and contrast before going back to that icky pink. There was nothing I could do about it obviously, so I went back to bed and talked for a little bit with Mike about how loud the thunder was and how yucky it looked outside. He laughed as we both mumbled ourselves back to sleep.

This morning as Mike was leaving for work, I mention something about how crazy the thunderstorm was last night. He looks at me blankly. "There was a thunderstorm?"

Mike is like the Incredible Hulk. Almost. His Hulk comes out when he's asleep. Luckily Mike-Hulk doesn't have anger issues and is pretty much just like the regular Mike...only generally more confused, more possessive of pillows and aggressive with his bed space. I will have full conversations with Mike-Hulk in the middle of the night with his eyes wide open looking right at me. Usually these midnight conversations will make no sense at all so I know I'm talking to Mike-Hulk, but occasionally there are midnight conversations that flow perfectly without sleepy slurring that make total sense. When that happens, I think I'm talking to the real Mike and we'll chit chat like normal before falling back asleep. It's only when morning comes that I realize I was fooled when I mention a conversation we had during the night and real Mike has no idea what I am talking about. I think the Mike-Hulk is getting wise and is probably trying to glean some kind of useful information off me. There are probably hundreds of sensitive secrets I might tell Mike in confidence that the Mike-Hulk is trying to get a hold of (you know, like my ATM PIN so he could drain my bank account and steal my identity. Darn you Mike-Hulk!)

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about it before, but my favorite Mike-Hulk moment was the night of the "mysterious disappearing wet spot". I'm lying in bed watching late night TV next to Mike who has been sleeping for at least the last 2 hours. He suddenly grabs his pillow and throws it on the floor. Puts his face on the bed where his pillow was and starts sniffing. I ask him if he's ok. "The dog peed on the bed" he says. Again, I've been awake for the last 2 hours and the dog has been nestled comfortably (for her) between my legs (why do dogs do that?) so I know she hasn't peed on the bed - much less peed under his pillow. At this point, I'm pretty confident that I'm dealing with Mike-Hulk so I turn back to the TV watch for a few minutes before turning it off and trying to get to sleep. Only a few moments pass before I feel Mike-Hulk pulling on my pillow. I grab hold of it for dear life as Mike-Hulk pulls the other side with full force (a woman knows no strength like when she's trying to keep her side of the blankets... or her own pillow). I ask, "do you want a pillow?" He nods. I pick up his pillow from the floor and give it back to him. He curls up with his pillow - it seems to pacify the Mike-Hulk for the night. Of course, in the morning real Mike has no real recollection of what transpired the night before. After much thinking, he has a vague recollection of the bed being wet... but that's about it.

Mike said that as a kid he used to sleepwalk. I read the Wikipedia entry on sleepwalking and it's pretty crazy all the things people can do or have done while "asleep". Neither Mike or the Mike-Hulk are ever the violent or angry types so I wouldn't expect anything as scary as some sleepwalkers have apparently done. I'm not going to lie though, I would love it if Mike-Hulk suddenly got the urge to scrub the bathtub and toilets in the middle of the night and had no recollection of it in the morning. How great would it be if Mike-Hulk decided to retile our bathroom floors and repaint the cabinets in the middle of the night? Supposedly some sleep walkers have the ability to do those things with great skill! I wonder if I could use the power of suggestion during my next Mike-Hulk encounter to get him to do that. I'll let you know how it goes.