Somnambulisming alllllll over the place…

I went into the kitchen this morning to make my daily to-go cup of unbearably strong coffee before taking Sully to school and heading off to work, and was met with a ridiculous mess.  Plates stacked on the counter that were originally in the dishwasher, water all over the floor, and shredded coconut strewn everywhere.  Sully told me it was like that when he got up (and OF COURSE he didn’t bother to do anything to clean it up… but he’s only 11, so he get’s a free pass for a little while longer).  I thought for a minute that our stupid littlest kitty, Daisy Ding Dong Stupid Face, had one of her “late night crazies” sessions where she destroys everything she can get to… but the bag of shredded coconut was closed and neatly sitting in it’s place, and how the fuck is a cat going to take the dishes out of the dishwasher?  So I stomped into the bedroom where Brad was still sleeping and asked what he had been up to in the middle of the night that left such a retarded mess for me to clean up.  He laughed and told me that it was all me.  Big sigh.  Sleepwalking strikes again.

Last night, I konked out early while Brad was at band practice.  He said when he got home I was out cold, but a little while after he had come to bed I sat up and started babbling.  He told me that the whole time he kept asking me if I was awake or not, and he says I insisted that I was awake.  Then I apparently marched off to the kitchen for a while… though he doesn’t have any idea what I was doing in there.  Ever since we saw the movie “Paranormal Activity”, he refuses to come find me or see if I’m ok if I’m sleepwalking because he says I’m creepy as hell and he’s afraid that I might come lunging around a dark corner at him with a knife.  So after I came back into the bedroom, he says I attempted to light a cigarette, and then I went back to sleep.  So now my list of night-time adventures is as follows:

• curling up in corners like a dog
• moving furniture
• standing in doorways screaming
• walking aimlessly in circles
• taking off my pajamas and wandering the house
• flinging water and shredded coconut
• unburdening the dishwasher of dirty dishes
• playing with my lighter and trying to smoke

I’m sure there’s more.  Much more.  I should set up ‘nanny cams’ in my house and turn them on at night like in “Paranormal Activity” to see what I really do.  But that might just creep me out too much after how unnerving it was to watch the sleepwalking chick in that movie.  God damn that fucking movie.

Aside from that ridiculousness, I should be getting new shirts onto the webstore this week!  And I have a bunch of other designs I’m finishing up right now.  Slowly but surely, back on track.  Yay!

And with that, I will leave you with one of my favorite photos of the week:

I love math people.

Day 1 of my mad dash towards The Organizational Promised Land…

When Brad and I first got together, he was on tour about 8 months out of the year.  I never gave this a second thought because we were in a constant “honeymoon” period, and I’m forever busy as hell and am pretty into my personal space.  Don’t get me wrong, I love sharing personal space with him- but my personal space is kept on a very short leash, and all items that exist within it have very specific designated places.  I get annoyed when this is altered.

Over the years, Brad has been touring less and less because he wants to stay home more.  I love having him home- but the more he’s home, the more my tightly-run-ship of a household turns to anarchy.  And it makes my head spin.  I’m going to spill a dirty-Brad-secret and divulge that he is MESSY!!!! MESSY MESSY MESSY MESSY MESSY!!!  Crumbs and socks and dirty dishes and piles of clothes and trails of spilled coffee and random objects scattered as far as the eye can see.  Sorry Brad, my darling- but it’s true.  Sully is a pigpen too- but he’s 11, so his brain is still in the making and I can mold it into what I want it to be (or at least as far as this subject is concerned).  But my dear husband is a lost cause with the teaching of “new tricks”, and he sincerely doesn’t see the mess around him- so I have given up trying to rectify these negative behaviors and now I just work with it.

How do I work with it?… I do the best I can to clean up what he doesn’t see as a mess when he’s in town.  But the moment he leaves for tour, the “White Tornado of Immaculate Fury” (ie: me in a manic frenzy) hits our house and makes it all better.  Brad left this afternoon for a 2 week tour with Intro5pect as their stand-in guitarist, and the moment he was gone, the madness started.  It resembles “spring cleaning” while on speedballs… and it doesn’t stop until every inch of our house is scrubbed down to the point that it can endure another few months of  Messy Boys until Brad leaves again.  Room by room I go through EVERYTHING top to bottom, scrubbing and dust-busting and organizing and discarding until I make it better.  Purifying the house of Messy Boy Demons and turning it back into a Kristen Sanctuary.  The kitchen, garage, and bedroom were tackled today.  Tomorrow the living room, dining room, and bathrooms.  Monday is the guest room, closets and cabinets.  Clean and purge, clean and purge, clean and purge- and purify.  Then bask in it.  Amen.

One thing I’ve been concerned about with Brad going out of town was my sleep walking.  I don’t like the idea of wandering around the house in the middle of the night without another adult there to supervise that I’m not leaving the house or doing anything destructive.  So to prepare for this I started a little experiment last week, and have been tying one of my feet to our bed frame before I go to sleep.  Each morning I wake up with my foot still tethered to the bed, and Brad says that I didn’t get up.  Who knows if I tried to get up, but since I don’t think I could manage redoing the intricate restraint system that I set up with my leash while in sleepwalking mode, I’m pretty secure in the fact that I stayed put all night.  I’m pleased as punch that this has worked so far- but I’m just waiting for the night that I get up and fall flat on my face (because if a stupid accident is to happen, we can all be sure that it will happen to me because I’m apparently part cartoon character).

On a final note, I had a dream the other night that I was trying to stick a 2 headed puppy in an envelope- and failing miserably at my attempts at this.  Here’s hoping that I have a million more dreams just like that, because it was hilarious.

Off I go to bed, and I hope that tonight I have dreams of this little guy because he’s my new best friend:

*Poof!*

Memoirs of a bad sleeper…..

I’ve always been a bad sleeper.  Nightmares, and screaming in my sleep, and sleep walking, and tossing and turning, and insomnia, etc.  It breaks my heart because I LOOOOOOVE to sleep, and there’s nothing more frustrating than to wake up exhausted after a horrible night of tossing and turning and nightmares.

My brains is really vicious when it comes to nightmares.  One of it’s favorite tricks to play is to have my nightmare start in the exact same setting as how I went to sleep.  I’ll get in bed and close my eyes to go to sleep, then open them again and be dreaming- but in my dream, everything is exactly how it was when I fell asleep so I don’t know I’m dreaming.  I used to have nightmares all the time that started out like this, but in the dream I’m paralyzed and unable to make any noise (only able to stare straight ahead)- but I can hear someone breaking into the house or killing Sully in another room (horrifying, I know).  I sometimes sleep with my eyes open (or so I’ve been told), so I think that’s where these dreams come from.  I hate these nightmares more than anything on the planet, and I will try to stay awake for days after having one because I’m so afraid of them.

My most common re-occurring nightmare is that my teeth have fallen out.  All the symbolism and dream analysis books I have say that teeth are a sign of power (which is why warriors in tribes make jewelry out of the teeth of their kills or the animals they’ve hunted).  I don’t know if that really ties into these nightmares or how much stock I put into dream analysis- but it seems to fit.  I feel like I’ve lost control or power over my current life situation- so out go the teeth.  I’ve always compulsively clenched my jaws and grind my teeth (sometimes so much that I give myself horrible headaches), so I’m sure I’m somewhat aware of this while I’m sleeping and this adds to the nightmares.  (Yeah… I’m a little tightly wound… I’m working on that.)

I had one of my teeth dreams last night.  But this time it was accompanied by some of my legendary sleepwalking.  In my dream, I got out of bed and could feel something weird in my mouth… like gravel and dust.  So I went into our bathroom, and all my bottom teeth were crumbling to pieces.  I knew I had to get to work in the morning, and that I didn’t have time to go to the dentist, so I started to panic about how I was going to keep my teeth intact throughout the upcoming day.  All the while, they’re falling apart like sand castles, leaving black bloody gaping holes in my gums.  Then, the muscles in my bottom lip went dead, and it would do nothing but lifelessly hang there exposing my rotting mouth.  If I tried to speak, it was nothing but a string of garbled nonsense followed by waterfalls of blood and drool.  I began pacing around the house trying to find something to hold my bottom lip in place so I could get to work in the morning.

And this is where the sleepwalking comes in.

Brad will usually wake up in the middle of the night and hang out in the kitchen until he can get sleepy enough to fall back asleep (he’s not a great sleeper either.. . but he’s just restless- not plagued with the bullshit that I go through).  He informed me this morning that I joined him in the kitchen last night.  He said that I wandered into the dining room (scaring the shit out of him) with my hands in my mouth, looking distraught.  He asked me what I was doing, and I started mumbling over and over (hands still in mouth) that I was looking for my teeth.  He said he didn’t realize what was going on until he looked at my eyes, and he said they were the eyes of a dead person.  Totally vacant.  After being thoroughly freaked out, he put me back to bed… though he said I laid there with my dead eyes open for a really long time, mumbling and playing with my teeth, giving him the creepin’ willies.

I’d really like for this to stop.  I’ve tried drinking “sleepy” teas and eating full meals before bed; drinking booze and taking pills; meditating and yoga; limiting the hours I sleep to just a few a night so that I’m frighteningly exhausted by the time I hit the sack; soothing music; etc.  You name it… I’ve tried it.  But my stupid fucking brain is dead set on playing mean games all night.  It’s really starting to piss me off… not to mention that I’m so damn tired when I wake up from my nocturnal adventures that I can’t think clearly enough to get through my days.

I’ve been asked over and over where I come up with the images for my paintings… my dead-eyed sleepwalking nightmares are where they start.  And I’d like for them to give me a little bit of a break.

Any suggestions?  Anyone?