While You Were Sleeping...

I've written before about some of the marital difficulties that we experience due to uncomplimentary sleeping habits. What I have not written about before are some of the humorous experiences we've had during the wee hours of the night.

My FD is a very deep sleeper. Heavy machinery is required to wake him in the middle of the night. This stems from the years he spent working on a farm. He grew accustomed to sleeping at very random hours, sometimes catching 45 minutes of sleep here and there. At times, he would go 4-5 days without sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time. He still falls asleep very quickly and immediately drops into the dead of sleep. I think his body is so scared that it won't get to sleep much that it ensures any sleep available is taken. When the task of waking him from his slumber is successful it takes him quite a long time to "wake up" and get his bearings straight. I am not nearly as deep of a sleeper. However, I, like him, become very incoherent when I am woken. Especially if I get woken up within an hour or two of when I've fallen asleep, I get very confused.

We have had many interesting encounters due to our mutual nocturnal incoherence. Many mornings I wake up with a fuzzy memory of a strange occurrence and when I question the fabulous dude about said occurrence, he usually has the same fuzzy memory. We figure that two fuzzy memories = one actual occurrence. On a fairly regular basis, one of us will wake up in the morning and say, "I might have been dreaming, but..." or "Did I imagine it or did (blank) really happen last night?" And usually, the other person looks puzzled for a moment and then says, "Yes, I think that actually happened". I thought I would share with you some of the more memorable experiences we've shared.

One night I woke up screaming and feeling an intense pain in my leg, as though something, or someone was trying to shatter it. The FD was sitting up in bed, screaming profanities that would make a sailor blush and holding my leg in some kind of strange wrestling move, in the process of breaking it. It wasn't until a few days after this that I began to recall the experience and asked him, "Uhhh, did you try to break my leg a few nights ago?" Him: "Yeah, I think I did. Sorry about that."

Another time, I woke up with a start in the middle of the night and realized that he was not in our bed. Because he very rarely wakes up through the night, I began to panic. I started calling to him and screaming, "Where are you? Are you okay?" He returned to the bedroom and informed me he was fine, he just had to take a leak. Whew, that was a close one!

Speaking of taking a leak, another time he went to the washroom in the night and when he returned, apparently I shot out of bed quite energetically and said "Whoo hoo. It's my turn". I then ran to the washroom for "my turn" and said nothing when I came back to bed (I don't remember this one).

A few weeks ago, he came home from baseball and I was already in bed. When he got into bed he tried to say goodnight to me a few times, with no response. Eventually, I turned around and began to slap his thigh repeatedly with the palm of my hand. He said it went something like this... "Smack. SmackSmackSmack. SmackSmack. Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack." He said, "What was that for?" I rolled over and said nothing. A few minutes later, I whipped around and threw my hand at his face, creating a scratch on his forehead with my huge diamond ring. Again he said, "What was that for?" My response: "I just wanted to say goodnight."

And finally, one that tops them all. FD generally sleeps on his back. I sleep on my side with my back to him. A few nights ago, I rolled over and looked at him and was startled by something I saw. Here is how the conversation went.

Me: "Ahh. There's a turd on your chest."
Him (as he sits up): "What?"
Me: "Oh, never mind, it was your hand. I thought it was poop."
We both laid back down and went back to sleep.

There is certainly never a dull moment in our home ... even when we're both asleep.

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