Sleep = Good

What better time to blog than when you've slept 2.5 hours out of the last 36? This mini-essay is an experiment. I want to see how many brain cells I've killed off.

Debbie and I made a dash to Bethalto Sunday afternoon after morning worship service. 575 miles. A decent drive. We slept in our own house on our own air mattress. The place is haunted. No, seriously. It's haunted. About half of the furniture is gone and what remains likes to tell stories. It is impossible to sit on a chair or at a table without recalling the multitude of great times that took place on that spot. Even the garage tells stories. And don't even think about going into the (former) kids rooms!

But I had not checked on the house or the yard since June. I was shocked when I pulled in the drive. It was dark but not so dark as to prohibit seeing the carnage that three months had taken. The shrubs had extended over the sidewalk. The driveway had mega-weeds sprouting through the cracks. And the 4 trees in the backyard had grown to the point where their branches came within one foot of the ground. Seriously, I had trimmed them in June and had walked under them and could not touch those same branches that I now nearly tripped over.

And so a long hard day was spent trimming and dragging, trimming and dragging. You know. Trim the growth and drag it to the street. And it was a lovely 93 degrees. The humidity reached the "ocean" range on the old humidity scale. If I didn't lose a few pounds there is simply no justice.

But there were fun times like last night. We had a great evening at the home of our forever friends, Bob and Cindy Dude. Kelli and Joe were there, The Amazing Elle was in attendance, and Jim and Alisha also showed up. Debbie and i were the last ones out the door and arrived home around midnight. I saw 1AM before finally falling asleep. And I woke up at 3:30AM with the realization that Debbie was moving around. She hadn't fallen asleep. So I did that "husband comfort" thing, telling her that all was well. She fell asleep. I was awake. Somewhere around 4:30AM she woke up and told me that a light had just flashed through the living room window. (We were sleeping in the living room.) Then she fell back asleep. I ... didn't. I checked the yard. Nothing. I went back to the air mattress, listening for foreign noises. You see, nobody has lived in the house since April when Christopher moved to Kelli and Joe's. So the house is a target. That's obvious. At 4:45AM a police car with flashing lights drove down the street. Now I was not only awake but in hyper-mode. At 5:15AM a garbage truck came along with a flashing light on the back on his truck. That had to be checked-out. And at 5:45AM my neighbor across the street started up his truck and flipped on his headlight. He had backed into his drive and my room light up almost violently. At 6:45AM my alarm went off. We drove away at 7:30AM. I think Debbie slept for 3 hours. So she had to do most of the driving on the drive home today. We got back 45 minutes before I had to teach Wednesday evening bible study.

Okay, there it is! Tomorrow morning I'll reread this and if it actually makes sense I'll know that I am a genius that can survive on virtually no sleep after sweating off my entire entire body weight.

This .. is a test ...