By: Mom
[2003-07-03]
Asleep in Minnesota
what are you doing in my closet?
Names have not been changed in hopes of prompting the accused to submit embarrassing stories about Mom in retaliation. - ed.
I wanted to write about Minnesota Sandy and her sleep problems. Thought about titling it Minnesota Sandy's Disturbing Sleep Stories or something like that.
The first story needs some background. When my mother was pregnant with me, her fourth child, my parents bought a three-bedroom house. Since they already had two daughters and only one son, my mother decided that I would be a boy and would share a room with my brother. Instead, they got a third daughter. Lucky Leo got his own room and my two sisters and I were crammed into one bedroom.
It was not fun sleeping three girls to a double bed when one (the middle sister) was a bedwetter. Putting Susie on a rollaway was okay, except it left very little floor space in the room for playing. After several years, my parents got the financing to add on a fourth bedroom. Unfortunately, the floor plan of the house did not leave any practical place to add that room so Sandy's room could only be entered by walking through Susie and my room.
Anyway,
I was not a bedwetter. If I had to pee at night, I'd wake up and go to the bathroom. It was conveniently close to my bedroom, too; get out of bed, take a right and then a left and there I was. One night, Sandy woke to sound of someone rustling around in her closet.
"What are you doing in my closet?"
"Peeing."
Her closet was also conveniently close to my bedroom; one only had to take a left and then another left. Despite the handicap of being asleep, I was valiantly looking for the toilet in her closet. Luckily, Sandy was able to divert me to the bathroom before I settled in to squat over her shoes.
***
When I was visiting my sister Sandy in Minnesota this summer, she told me her dream.
Her neck was broken - at least, she couldn't use it to lift her head. Her chin was resting on her chest. She was out with her daughter and needed to cross the street but couldn't see where she was going because her chin was on her chest and she couldn't raise her head. She finally made it to her car but couldn't open the door, couldn't get in because her neck was broken and she couldn't raise her head. She asked her daughter for help, "Melissa, help me! I can't lift my head to see." Melissa did not help her. Instead, Sandy woke up to find she had been sleeping in the chair in front of her computer, her chin resting on her chest.
***
Many years ago my sister, Sandy, had a seizure. She and her daughter were watching TV in her bed when the seizure occurred. Her husband immediately called the paramedics and Dad. Sandy reported to me that she woke up from her postictal state to find all these handsome men in her room, but there was nothing she could do about it because her husband and father were there, too.
***
We were in Minnesota recently, staying with my parents while visiting the family. Sandy offered my husband use of her computer so he could keep up with his eBay auctions while we were vacationing. One evening, after going to a movie, we decided to take Sandy up on her offer. As we knocked on the door, we could see her in her chair in front of the TV. No response. We rang the doorbell. She didn't stir. She had given Ben the code to get in through the garage door, so we used it to gain access to the house. We walked in and said hi. Nothing. We walked over to where she was sitting, being careful not to get fingerprints on anything, but luckily she was just sound asleep.
We chuckled and headed to the computer room. On the way there we passed Sandy's husband, reclining on his bed, watching TV. We waved hi, but he too was asleep. Ben got on Sandy's computer and I returned to the living room to watch TV with my sleeping sister. I gently pried the remote out of her hand and changed it to Comedy Central. After about 20 minutes she coughed some and then woke up. She blinked at me for a few seconds. Then we woke her husband up and laughed and laughed. If she hadn't eventually woken up, Ben and I were going to move her toaster to the bathroom and leave quietly. Oh well.
Annna suggested I point out that the first story is technically not "about Minnesota Sandy and her sleep problems" unless "sleep problems" includes problems with sleepingwalking siblings threatening to pee in your shoes. Well, Annna, it does. It was just another story about something disturbing Sandy's sleep.
I was hoping this would involve lutefisk and lefse somehow, but the peeing in the shoes part was pretty good. As for strange sleep behavior, when 8 to 10 years old, I occasionally went sleep-eating. I know that I did this because a few times I awoke in the middle of the night eating! Usually it was cold chicken and potato salad, but sometimes ice cream or watermelon. A neighbor school teacher, one of her sons was laying on his back sleeping in the TV room when of a sudden he put his arms in the air, and while twisting an imaginary handlebar throttle, he made loud motorcycle noises!
I had a bedwetting problem. I also had a crybaby problem, and would call for Mom a lot. It pissed my brother off. My eldest brother got a room all to himself, the bastard.
I was about . . . three or so when I stopped wetting. I guess I was three. I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch. Hell, I have trouble remembering if I ate at all.
Jambalaya, a crawfish pie, and fillet gumbo
when I was old enough to start sleeping in a bed as opposed to a cot, (or crib) I shared a room with my middle sis, and my oldest sister moved into her own room, which was previously mine when I was in my cot. She had shared the room with middle sis.
Anyways, my new room had certain complications. While I had my side of the room, she had the other, and filled every square inch of the wall, and the roof, with pictures ranging in size from postage stamps to full posters of all her favourite celebrities, mostly cut out of smash hits magazine, and many more refugees from the 80s. Mostly sarah gilbert from roseanne, and melrose place and 90210 group shots.
Of course, because they were all poser shots the celebs were all staring DIRECTLY INTO THE LENS of the cameras. So I had this wall of people staring at me, as it faced my side of the room, whenever I wanted privacy, which was a kick in the ass as even with my sis gone I still couldn't get privacy.
And when I went to bed at night, they were still there. Hundreds of them. On the roof. Staring at me with their dead eyes.
Oh god, the nightmares.
I don't like seafood, unless I can't taste it. Crayfish remind my of 'roaches, crabs are too hard to peel, etc. Jambalaya is okay, but I just like it with chicken, same with gumbo (an African word for oakra).
I just had a dream about sex and death, in that order. There was a convertable Caddy with "Go" buttons, like from Pete & Pete.
On the Chesapeake Bay here, the world's largest estuary, blue crabs and oysters are a big thing; but current harvests indicate that populations are 10% of what they were. I just had some strange dreams, but I had been sleeping so deeply that by the time I awoke I'd forgotten all of it. A recent strange dream was that I was walking in a small town in Kansas on a summer day. All of the houses were square and white one-story units painted white. They looked like the kind that were built just after WWII, two-bedroom. It was dusty, too. It was sort of blinding bright, the dusty streets and yards, and white houses. There was nobody out, and at first it seemed like they might be inside because it was the hot part of the day, but I got the sense that something had just happened, or was about to happen. I was on my way to look for a corner store to get something or other, and I started running. After running for several blocks, I awoke. Now, I don't want to go to Kansas!
I reckon prawns (shrimp) are like grasshoppers of the sea. Fish are like rats. Dolphins are dogs. Whales are cows.
Crayfish are like giant cockroaches.
That's what i think, anyway. And grasshoppers taste like prawns as well.
Thai prawns are good, cooked with coconut milk, garlic and cilantro. But I always think of the Hindu guys eating BIG JUICY WHITE GRUBS!
I've seen some Mexican men eat live las cucaracha. I had a dream about roaches. I rememebr they were everywhere. Yech, I hate athropods.
Dream analyses: CONFORMATY ... BAD
Freudian Dream analyses: You want to sleap with your mother.
Yaaaaaaaaay, Moms!
no matter what the dream or probllam was actually about if you are a boy, you want to sleep with your mother. if you were a girl on the other hand, you wish you were a boy so you could sleep with your mother.
and no, cigars aren't just cigars.
"A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."
--Rudyard Kipling
"A woman is just another way of depressing me greatly."
-Andrew Cheramie
