Paranormal Activity

I'm ready to start videotaping the madness that is a typical night at the Castle. I can try to describle it, but it just doesn't seem as really retarded as it actually is.

Last night, my husband tackled me TWICE during the night. No, that is not code for any kind of sexual encounter (though in hindsight, they probably aren't much different). No, this was less Morningwood Lumbar Company and more Monday Night Football. He was having a football dream and literally jumped across the bed and woke me up screaming. Obviously I had the football, but no clue where I'd put it (probably somewhere with my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup). Either way, I do not like to play football, and I most definitely do not like to be woken up in the middle of the night to play football. So even though I gave him the benefit of the doubt the first time, when he did it again, I yelled, "What the hell's wrong with you? Get out!" He laughed (maybe he thought he finally got the first down?) and went off to finish the game solo in the spare bedroom.

My puppy sleeps in a kennel in our room (he'd rather be with Ginger, but she sleeps with Branden and it's her only free and alone time without the puppy in her face, so he's stuck with us), but he usually falls asleep on the bed with us first and then I move him, which really isn't unlike my own kids when they were equally small and cute. He usually finds a spot on the blanket and starts "digging." He digs and digs and digs (note to self: puppy needs his nails trimmed) and eventually crashes upside down with his huge fox ears flopped out from his head and his bear paws just kind of hanging.

In the meantime, I usually read because I have an hour before my nightly pharma-cocktail kicks in, but....somewhere in that time, the amnesia part is already in high gear because when I try to pick up wherever I left off in my book the night before, I always find that I have no idea what happened in the last 10 or 15 pages. It's 2 steps forward, 1 step back every day. (Like the Midnight Noshing, you'd think I'd have figured out to stop trying to read a book once I pop my pills, but old habits die hard and late night TV is a dud so I'm limited in my pre-sleep entertainment.)

My cats and my kids wander like vampires. Last night there was an all-claws-out hellacious cat fight, the proof of which was the clumps of cat hair scattered all around the floor (not to mention the actual cat fight hissing and meowing we heard last night but were too lazy to go down and break up). Having two teenagers in the house, the night noises are plentiful, and if someone were to ever break in we wouldn't even know it between the microwave, garbage can, cupboard doors opening and slamming, TV, cell phone ringing, midnight McDonald's runs, etc. I'm thinking of just installing a GPS chip in all of my kids (and maybe the pets) so I can follow their middle of the night journeys they take from the comfort of my bed. There must be an app for that, right?

My husband is the jewel in my crown of nighttime idiocy. He usually doesn't make it more than a couple of hours before his nighttime thrashing, snoring, muttering, laughing annoy me to the point where I kick him out. Unfortunately, the exchange almost always goes like this:

Me: Jay, wake up. 
Jay: What?
Me: Wake UP!
Jay:  Ok.
(PAUSE for 30 seconds, then he starts snoring again.)
Me: Jay, wake up! (Possibly a jab or punch now, but no one can prove that.)
Jay: (Looking around frantically) What? What happened? What's going on?
Me: You're snoring. Go sleep in the guest room.
Jay: What? (He's now a night zombie and can't see or hear anything. Fearing for my own safety, I feel it's very urgent to get him out of here before he eats my brain.)
Me: You're SNORING. Go sleep in the other room! (Start shoving him towards the edge of the bed in hopes that his minimal brain activity will just follow the momentum.)
Jay: Okay.

This is when he stands up, stops for about 20 seconds, then finally shuffles off to search for either more brains or the extra room's bed. Either way, my brain and chances of falling asleep are now significantly better, so I am pleased. At least until darkness falls again. Then it's every woman, man, kid, cat, NFL player, and dog for themselves.