I Had the Stupidest Night's Sleep Ever

As the title says, I had the stupidest night's sleep ever. I have entered the phase of my life wherein if I have anything caffeinated after about 10:00 a.m., I can't sleep half the following night. Last night, I really blew it, because I had a couple of Cokes with dinner at Howard's Place at 6:00 p.m. effectively shooting my night's sleep and my anti-high fructose corn syrup campaign in the rump all in one shot. Darn you, Howard's chicken fingers with gravy and your evil, seductive ways!

Anyway, after a scintillating Jane Austin movie marathon (ah, the many faces of  Mr. Darcy... all of them cranky) and the semi-successful conversion of half of my favorite pair of socks (sadly sporting holes in the sole) into half of a pair of fingerless gloves, I went to bed. I thrashed around and annoyed Joe for a while, resolved never to yell at Charlie again when he flops around in bed for a half hour before succumbing to sleep, and finally entered CDS (Copious Drool Sleep) around midnight.

At 3:00 a.m. I was jolted awake by Abraham crying. When I went to comfort him, I fell asleep in his bed until 4:00 a.m. when my hummingbird-sized bladder woke me. After stumbling back from the bathroom, I went to my own bed where I slept until 4:42 a.m. That was when Abraham woke again. I went to comfort him. I went back to my bed at 5:12 a.m. At 5:38, I woke again to Abraham crying and saying "Uh-uh!" on the floor at the foot of my bed. Okay, I admit it: I picked him up by his ankles, dumped him in bed beside me, and smacked his fanny when he tried to throw himself on the floor in a fit of temper. He subsided back into sleep. I subsided back into sleep. The alarm rang. I don't think a new alarm clock is going to cost that much. It's the window that I threw it through that worries me...

The saving grace of a night like that is the excellent blog material. While I was flitting in and out of sleep like a demented hummingbird hopped up on Crank, I had a couple of truly bizarre dreams which I remembered way better than I wanted to. Get out your dream symbol dictionaries, because I need help with these:

In the first dream, Joe and I are standing in a pumpkin patch. The pumpkins are quite large, but most of them are still green, or green with orange patches showing. I keep trying to pick them, and Joe keeps saying, "No! Don't pick the canteloupes! Only pick the watermelons!" And I keep saying, "But these are pumpkins!"

Even in dreams, men are unreasonable!

In the second dream, I have apparently decided to go back to college. I have versions of this dream a lot: wherein I am at college and remember I have kids. What did I do with them?  Anyway, in this version of the dream, I am in this enormous, labyrinthine university that seems to have undergone a recent bombing, because there are holes in the wall in random places. The boys are with me, and we are running up and down staircases and hallways in a great hurry, though I'm really not sure where we're going. Ultimately, we end up in a crowded room where people are packing into an elevator every few minutes. I watch as the elevator opens  vertically, like a dumbwaiter, rather than the traditional sliding doors. There is no back. A couple of ragged holes open on a pretty green yard with paths and people. A youth steps onto the elevator just as it goes shooting up and ends up going with it clinging by his fingertips, though this doesn't seem to alarm him. Suddenly, Abraham goes running through the open elevator shaft and out the blown out back. I jump to put myself under the door, holding it up with my arms above my head so it won't close Abraham off from my sight. I am shouting, "Abraham, come! Back! Here! RIGHT! NOW!" and he's taunting me, saying "Uh-U-uh!" while scooting further away. I can't go to get Abe without leaving Charlie, but I can't let Abe get any further away, so I make the choice to go after Abe. I think at this point even my dreaming brain was too traumatized to allow any ill to befall Charlie, because when Abe and I crawl back through the blown out hole in the wall, we find Charlie just fine except that he's standing in a puddle of spilled chicken soup.

Will someone please prescribe medication?