Ack

This does not bode well for me.  Day two of NaBloPoMo and I've already got writer's block. 

You'd think I'd maybe write about voting or the election or something... but no.  As part of my civic duty, I voted, but I'm only barely interested.  Apathy? Maybe.  I don't care. Same as it ever was, I suppose the Talking Heads would say.

Work is still too busy and I don't like thinking about it when I'm not being paid to do so. I'm happy and grateful to be working, but I'm really looking forward to the end of November when my stressful work season will pause briefly and I can take a breath before it goes crazy again. 

Sometimes I think about going back to school and getting my Masters... everyone seems to be doing that or having babies... or both... which should make me feel like an underachiever, but really? Meh.  What graduate program? Uh. Probably napping.  I'd make an excellent Professional Napper... I just haven't found a program that really addresses my ideal field of study and I've never heard of anyone getting a decent salary for professional napping services. (And before you suggest it, medical studies are temp work - and they wouldn't pay well enough for someone with a Masters in Naptime.)

I'm really good at it so I'd have to ask for a ridiculously high salary for my napping skills. I could be the clincher of a professional nap-time endurance team. I often wonder if maybe my ideal cycle would be 24 hours awake, 24 hours asleep.  I'm pretty good at staying awake late and once I'm asleep, I've got no problems staying asleep.  Waking up and falling asleep are not as fun...obviously.

Sunday through Thursday I normally dread waking up the next morning so much that I fight to stay awake for as long as possible the night before.  I'll crawl into bed, burney eyed and yawning, alternating keeping one eye open at a time. Watching TV, browsing the internet, reading shampoo labels - anything so that I can enjoy my time after work for the longest period possible.  Irrationally I've convinced myself that the longer I stay awake, the longer it will be until I have to be back at my desk.  If I fall asleep at a decent hour, not only do I miss all the fun TV (this is my inner child talking, she doesn't know about DVR) but I will also be jolted awake by the sound of my alarm after what feels like 2 minutes of sleep.  I know this ends up coming back to bite me in the morning... when I've hit the snooze 7 times and am rationalizing 10 more minutes of sleep when I have to be at work in 15 (I've done it.)  Once I've stepped into the realm of REM, there's nothing I can do better.  10-12 hours of sleep is a comfortable Friday night/Saturday morning if I've got the time.  15 hours makes me feel like I've discovered the fountain of youth. 

Mike used to get annoyed when he'd wake up and be bored on Saturday morning and I'd still be sleeping, blissfully uninterrupted.  No alarms, no gardeners, no loud noises can wake me prematurely on a morning I don't have to be up before noon.  "How could I sleep away a precious day off?!" He would ask.

He finally came to understand that outside of social obligations, sleeping is my past-time of choice.  Where he might like to play video games or even be productive on a crisp sunny Saturday morning, I would like to continue my dream cycle well into the afternoon.   And if you had some of my dreams, I'm sure you would too. 

In  97% of  my dreams I am awesome.  Like I'm flying-ninja-pirate-sexy-Iron-Woman- and-Mother-Theresa-combined-into-one-mecha-warrior awesome.  2% of the time, I have work-related dreams that serve to annoy then amuse and 1% of the time I have nightmares.  Even the nightmares are kind of badass because I always wake up happy that it was a dream and then think, dude... I'm practically Stephen King... except I've never written any of my nightmares down.

I do feel guilty about sleeping in so much sometimes... mostly when Mike is hungry and bored and I wake up at noon to find the kitchen cleaned and laundry being done out of boredom.  Oops.  Eventually I'll make up for it with my nocturnal cleaning  though.  I have been known to suddenly have the urge to clean the ENTIRE house top to bottom at 11:45 in the evening... make the whole place spotless while Mike sleeps blissfully unaware... and then sleep in until 3pm the next day.  So.  It works out.  Mike can fall asleep in 10 seconds flat, but can't stay asleep more than 9 hours even if he tries.  I can take hours to really fall asleep, but when I get there, I make it count.

Ok, it's 11:50PM... I have to post this before I fail at NaBloPoMo on the second day of writing.  Leave it to me to procrastinate this early in the blog game and then write a weird blog.  

Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the Grub.

Everyone seems to be posting the things they are thankful for. I have a lot of things to be thankful for so, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here we go.

I have to get the normal stuff out of the way - they'll get weirder because I'm thankful for weird things too.

First, I'm thankful for my family - husband, mom, dad, brother, and all my relatives all over this planet and my fantastic in laws. I wouldn't trade out any of them... even for Johnny Depp.

I'm thankful for my dog and all the dogs I've met or ever lived with. Dogs are awesome.

I'm thankful for ALL my friends and that you all are nice to me. I'm thankful that some of you are smart, some of you are thoughtful and some of you are stupid awesome - you all make me happy.

I'm thankful that I was born a healthy human being with a fully functioning human body. By "I", I mean my consciousness or whatever it is that seems to be linked to my human body but not limited by it. "I" could have been an ant or a termite or a monkey. Sometimes I'm jealous of my dog and the Lochness monster, but in the end I prefer to be human. As a human, I am thankful for all the animals and plants that sustain my omnivorous life. I'm thankful for all the humane farmers and workers who treat those creatures with respect and the people who work to make sure that the Earth and all animals are treated that way no matter where they sit in the food chain.

I'm thankful for all the blessings that came with the fact that I was lucky to be born in a first world country. I didn't do anything to deserve it, but considering that the odds of being born in the USA is about 3.1% and about a 15% chance of being born in a first world country, I pretty much already won the lottery. I'm no more or less special than any other child born on the same date at the same time, but "I" got lucky.

I'm thankful for the guy who designed Mercedes 300E that was built in '87. My old car is the best.

I'm thankful for technology. Facebook. Computers. Internet. Blogging. Google. Nanomachines. Robots. Even if I hate some of it, I'm still thankful for it.

I'm thankful for Battlestar Galactica. And the X-Files. And Arrested Development... And The Office... And Cartoons.... And actually, if I go on it will be too long. I'm thankful for TV... but only the shows I like. I'm not thankful for shows I do not like.

I'm thankful for subtitles.

I'm thankful for Michio Kaku, Ray Bradbury, Dorothy Day, Francis of Assisi, Anthony of Padua and Steven Colbert. Maybe for reasons other than what you might assume.

I'm thankful for Jon Stewart - probably for the same reason you assume.

I'm thankful for time travel (it will happen/has already happened... we can discuss this another time.)

I'm thankful for cheese.

I'm thankful that I haven't been abducted by aliens.

I'm thankful for ghosts. Even though I haven't seen one myself.

I'm thankful for photographs.

I'm thankful for pizza and nachos and frozen yogurt.

I'm thankful for patient polite strangers.

I'm thankful for people who hold open doors for others - male or female.

I'm thankful for holidays.

I'm thankful for the reality that my perception creates. Because of this, I believe the world I see every day is actually very beautiful.

I'm thankful for many more things that would take me years to list. Since I can't list them and because Michael is telling me we have to go, I have to remember to say a thank you in my head for those little things when I come across them - Thanksgiving time or not. I'm Thankful for it year round.

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.