PPPPPUUUUUUUUUU

Who needs the delusions provided by illegal drugs and copious amounts of alcohol when you can have a household mechanical device malfunction at 2 a.m. awakening you into a fit of the fifth day of sleep deprivation (i.e., before last night I couldn't fall asleep before 3 a.m. and got up every morning between 6 and 7 a.m.)?

My highly trained late night Mommy brain went something like this --"Do I smell fire or is that MacTroll's onion breathe?"

"No, that's fire."

"Wait, shouldn't there be smoke?"

"Oh, god, is it my Fuel Band?" Sniff my Fuel Band, then my iPad, then my laptop and then my phone. "No... Why does it stink so bad?"

"Is it the dog's butt? -- No. How about the cat's butt? -- No."

"What the hell?"

I walked into the hallway. It smelled less. I went into X-man's room. It smelled a bit more.

I decided I wasn't making it up and woke MacTroll. We wandered around the house and it got a lot stronger in the laundry room -- which is over the HVAC room.

So, we head down there. Oh, dear god did it smell. It was kind of a combination burning rubber and metal and dead things. It made my stomach churn. I started to dry heave, so I walked outside. Much better.

We decided it was the HVAC and turned off the air conditioning and the fan. We opened up all the windows and turned on all the fans. But it still made me feel sick.

I decided to pitch our tent.

This is a great plan. Our tent usually only takes me 5 minutes to put up. Last night I swear it took 30.
Then I got everything in it and made X-man come outside with me. I figured if it made me sick, then my child shouldn't be breathing it.

X-man was fine. Yes, he asked me five times if it was going to rain or if bugs would eat him. On top of it, Lily was coming in and out of the house confused as hell as to why were weren't all in our beds. I apologize if her barking once at 4 a.m. and once at 5 a.m. at crazy early dog walkers woke people.

The first time, I let her back in the house. MacTroll tried to make her stay with him. Then, it turned out, she let herself out the back door. Then I put her back inside (thinking it was MacTroll putting her back out because she was whining and annoying him). And she let herself back out -- I didn't wake up the second time, so she let the cats out, too.

Last night I woke up every 45 minutes. Once to a train whistle and coyotes, twice to Lily barking, once to X-man shouting out, "I didn't mean to hurt you!" and twice to let Lily in and out of the tent. At some point, she actually settled down and slept for a few hours on top of X-man's tiny air mattress.

Then the sun came up, and I just left the door unzipped so she could go in and out as she pleased.

In my dreams, I saw my grandfather coming and petting my dog and promising to fix the smell, no problem. Then I insulted a new neighbor who asked for the best place to get a breakfast like one she could get in "Chicago." When she referenced IHOP, I kind of lit into her by asking how a chain restaurant was "Chicago."

Then I had a dream that I could still smell the terrible smell.

When I woke up, I realized it wasn't MacTroll who had been letting Lily out. That she had let herself out... Because the door was cracked open. And I realized, it wasn't a dream, I could smell it. It was coming out of a pipe from the house, but how is that possible, if I turned off the HVAC. Simple, it was coming from our water heater. This is okay, because it doesn't require a Sunday service visit because we have two water heaters. MacTroll turned the second one off, and we went to breakfast. When we came back, the smell was much less on the two floors with open windows.

So he's going to call the plumber in the morning.

But yeah, it wasn't very restful.

Today from 12-3, X-man has a play date with X-man +1 year. And then we're heading over to the Taste if the weather holds out to see the Brat Pack.

Hope to see some of you out there!

You Remind Me of Home

Whenever I dream at night of "home," I always dream of the house I grew up from 1979ish until my high school graduation. I have never dreamed of college or any apartment or house I've lived in past the age of 18. It's always of home or high school. How bizarre is that?

Anyway, last night I had a dream where my maternal grandmother, a very tiny woman who passed away from complications from Alzheimer's when I was a junior in college, lived next door to that childhood home. I was going over to visit her a lot in my dream because she was starting to not remember me, even though she was happy when I came over. I wanted to get to know her as an adult. I wanted to take care of her. I wanted to spend some time with her.

And then, poof, one morning I went over to her house in my dream and my mother told me she was dead. I woke up out of my deep sleep with a sense of shock and sadness. And then I soothed myself with 10 minutes of Tiny Tower and went back to sleep with my husband and our very snuggly puppy, whose tail is wagging off the roof that X-man is coming down the stairs right now making very loud mouth noises.

So I better run and get him some breakfast before I go to volunteer at a water table at the Rattlesnake Master 5k/10k with Savoy Rotary.

Stressful Waking

This morning at 5:45 a.m., my child woke up, ran out of his room and started calling for me. That's not normal. Usually he's a 7-7:15 a.m. kind of waker-upper.

I got up and he ran into my room. The minute he saw me he started crying. "Daddy won't let me have my birthday party. He told me I couldn't have any cake, and he took it away!"

Okay, since my son's birthday is in the winter, this is a dream. Except it was a dream that scared him. MacTroll tried to comfort him, but X-man moved away from him shouting, "You are not my friend any more, Daddy!"

How to explain the subconscious to a 4 year old? That it wasn't a premonition. That it wasn't reality. That perchance if he went back to sleep he'd have a happy dream...

But no, he was up. Scared. Whining. Crying. And in a terrible mood.

So, he ate breakfast. MacTroll went to the airport. Then I took him with me to get my blood drawn at Carle for a lipid test. I got poked, but he got to leave with a sheet of Marvel Hero stickers.

And I did something I don't normally do... I bribed him. "If you take a nap during naptime at school and actually sleep -- I'll take you to McDonald's for dinner."

Because holy cow, if I get an overtired X-man back after having crazy dream freakout this a.m., it's going to be a terrible evening. If he sleeps, he'll get McDonald's and Little Gym and be out by 8:30 p.m. and all will be okay in the world.

Nightmares

Usually I write that X-man is having troubling bad dreams. Instead, it's me. Very seldom do I get enough sleep that I actually get to dream. But the last few days I've been having these total stress dreams between 4 and 6:30 a.m.

Dreams where I'm making dinner and it is for some reason buried in dirt and rotting and I'm gagging as I dig it out.

Dreams where I'm still advising the student newspaper and I open it up to find that 4 of the 16 pages don't have material on them and the students think that this is okay -- "Because they were only supposed to be ads in those spaces."

Dreams where I can't find my child.

Dreams where my house is burning down and I can't find one of my cats.

Do you see? And what do I have to show for it? Apparently a lot of water retention and emotional eating according to today's weigh in.

I've been grouchy all day. And if that's how I'm starting the day, with having the shit scared out of me, I guess being grouchy makes sense, right?

Dreams

I've slept with a 2 year old in my bed every night this week except two. In the early morning, deep in his REM sleep, my boy thrashes and jibber jabbers. And, like a dog with twitching paws that barks in his sleep, I wonder what he's dreaming about that is so unrelaxing.

This morning, I had an unrelaxing dream.

The dream was that everyone I know had lost their jobs and couldn't take care of their animals. While they were looking for work they asked me to watch them. I have a pack of cats, a dog and a goldfish already. But now I had my mom's dog, my dad's dogs, my neighbor's dog and from what I could tell around 10-14 cats. And I was trying to keep an eye on all of them and my kid. The hard part was that all of my parents were there. And my mother kept not watching that the cats didn't run out in the cold. So at one point, Looseyfur is standing on the ash plate on the grill in front of the sliding glass door shivering. And just as I finish letting her back in and talking to my mother about watching for the cats, I notice my father has decided to light a huge bonfire in the middle of my living room five feet in front of the fire place.

I go screaming into the living room. He and my sister are sitting in chairs across the fire pit from each other. And I jump on top of him pulling at his shirt screaming, "Where will we all live? What have you done?"

I'm beating on his chest and screaming. 

And he says, "It was cold."

Yeah, so I woke up, and I don't really feel like going back to sleep.