Tag: sleep

Stick in a five and go

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I got punched last night. Quite hard. On the bit of my chest where it kind of joins my shoulder: bang in the pectoral. Right hand side.
It was quite a firm punch. Not massively hard, but certainly not a tickle either.

It was definitely enough to wake me up.

My time was 04:59 and the culprit was my wife. Having thumped me, she went back to sleep and I was left wondering why on earth I had been the victim of this wholly unprovoked assault. And let’s be absolutely clear here: an assault is exactly what this was, not some restless flailing arm. This was a decent right hook, clenched fist, delivered with reasonable force.

When I tackled her (not literally) about the incident this morning, she denied all knowledge of it. Which is exactly what she would do, of course. If there was ever an easy way to absolve oneself from allegations of spousal abuse, you wait until the wee small hours of the morning, stick in a five and go.

No witnesses, no protracted argument: claim total innocence.
And how can I even argue?

But hey: if I suddenly succumb to an overnight death by punching, you’ll know where to go looking, right?

No sleep til bedtime

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And then maybe not even then.

The beagle kept me awake for quite a lot of the night last night. Generally, the beagle is a very good sleeper. This probably comes from practising all day, every day – either in its basket or on the couch in the study. The commitment to attain new levels of extreme laziness is to be admired, but then, that’s basically what beagles are made for.

Last night was an exception though.

I’m not 100% sure what the problem was, but a gentle scratching in the kitchen quickly turned to crashing as several (or more) kilos of prime beagle meat repeatedly flung itself at the door in an effort to get me to come downstairs and let it out into the garden to ‘look around for stuff’ and have a pee.

It’s cold when you need to drag the beagle back in from the garden in the early hours of the morning. Colder still when you were cosy in bed before it started complaining.
But, finally it was relocated into its basket in the kitchen, and I was restored to my original position just beneath the duvet.

And then, 20 minutes later, it did it again. A quick glance at Mrs 6000 was all it took to make me realise that I was completely on my own in carefully defenestrating the dog again.

And so I did, and again, after 5 or more minutes of wandering around the garden and sniffing things, I managed to get it back into its basket.

And then, 30 minutes later… Look, you get the picture.

And once it’s happened a few times, you find yourself lying awake in bed, just waiting for the next whine, bark or splintering of the kitchen door. Even when (thankfully) none is forthcoming.

Thus, I am knackered. Look, I don’t really do sleep deprivation very well, but the good news is that from initial investigations, it seems that I can just about function on the couple of hours I got. That’s probably just while things are going well though. If you cross me today, I. Will. Cut. You. 

Oh, and a note on the beagle, because it obviously had an equally disturbed night. Well, while I dragged myself out of the house into the rain and off to the laboratory this morning, it was back to rehearsing its slumbers on the couch.

*forced smile*

Sometimes

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Sometimes, your phone battery is down to 19% (because of a million football whatsapps) and you’re ready for bed, even though it’s only half past eight (because there was a kid’s “sleep”over here last night).

And then you remember that you have blogging commitments. Better sort that out before one or other energy source expires then.

’tis done. And so am I.

Grammar

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So it turns out that getting your broken father onto a KLM 777-306(ER) at Cape Town International just before midnight on a Tuesday isn’t an absolutely straightforward experience, but can be aided by helpful staff. And so it turned out to be. Thanks to all concerned.

Still, upon returning home, I was quite reasonably expecting things to be more straightforward, but they weren’t, and 30 minutes after leaving the airport, I found myself showering our son because he was so feverish that he was having hallucinations.
A few SMSs later, and having been assured that Dad was on the flight, I settled off to sleep, only to be woken at 2, 3, 4 (thrice?) and 6 (twice) by the sound of copious vomiting from the Boy Wonder’s room.

I’m not quite with it today. The plan was to stay up and watch the footy tonight, but I’ll be lucky to make kick off.

In the meantime, here’s something that amused me this morning:

I’ve no idea if it’s grammatically correct, but I’m all about pseudo-intellectual, seasonal cartoons, especially when I’m so tired I can hardly think, so it’ll do nicely.

P.S. The boy is doing better this morning, thank you.
And Dad’s plane landed safely in Amsterdam, but I haven’t heard from him. Yet.

UPDATE: Apparently he’s on his connecting flight. I know you were all worried. Thanks for the concern.

The World Cup is killing me

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These late nights are killing me. Actually, it’s the early mornings in hellish conjunction with the late nights that are killing me.

2010’s games seemed to be at a much more acceptable hour, almost as if they were designed to be comfortable for our time zone. Weird.

Right now, I’m wondering whether I can afford a couple of extra hours to watch Ghana play the USA.
It sounds like quite an attractive idea at the moment, but that might not be the case at 6am tomorrow.

UPDATE: And why this fuss? Because death by World Cup exhaustion is a thing.