Sunday, February 24, 2008

why do we do it to ourselves?

Somehow lack of sleep changes a person. I am normally pretty nice, or so I think so, but let me get a terrible night sleep or be sick and I somehow morph into someone else. I guess that shows what I am really made of. Sad but true.

Last night my daughter invited five other girls over for a "sleep over" birthday party. Sounds pretty harmless since girls are not as prone to trouble like we have seen boys get into in the past. We have had boy "sleep over" parties in the past, one of which ended with police ringing the doorbell and upon answering the door I found several police cars in my driveway. That event ended the boy "sleep overs". Plus in our previous house in Fuquay Varina, the game room/boy "sleep over" room had an adjacent wall to our master bedroom. Was that ever a bad design for a house! We just could not block out their talking, which frequently carried on into the wee hours of the night. It has been several years since we have had a big "sleep over" party as I think we forgot how little sleep we got in the last ones.

Nothing bad happened at all - just girls coming into the house about every hour from 9pm until 7am this morning. You know, when I was a youngster I pulled an "all nighter" only a hand full of times. I felt so tired the next day that it was not pleasant for me. We took the girls to a movie at 4pm and while they were in the movie theater we went out to eat with our oldest son at Dickey's BBQ Pit, which really reminds us of the Texas style BBQ we love. When we picked them up at 6pm, they were really wound up, so to calm them down we took them to Starbucks Coffee. That was probably a bad idea, but hey you only turn 13 once and we wanted to make the evening special for the last such event in our family. After the ceremonial cake with 13 candles, the present opening and everyone adorned in pirate scarfs, they ran out to play a dance party game in the sound proof shed. The only time we heard them was when the sliding glass door was closed as little girls came in and out all night long. What ever happened to the good old come to my party with birthday presents, eat some cake and then leave?

One more thought for the day...

I remember when our daughter was born 13 years ago, but just barely. In those good old days I would often get to work around 4am and then then leave early to be with the family. One time I got bronchitis from a viral infection and not listening to my body's cry for rest that quickly became pneumonia. The doctor told me it was walking pneumonia, but I could barely walk and for most days hardly get out of bed. The timing was horrible as my wife was pregnant with our daughter. Then came the due date and I was wondering how I would make it to hospital. My wife drove me to the hospital! Now that was sad. The good news was that the birthing room had a very nice recliner in it. I went right to it and put my feet up and promptly fell asleep. The gynecologist woke me up and told me to stand up and come over to see my daughter being born. It turns out with pneumonia that only the first couple of weeks are cause for alarm on being contagious, so that was not my concern. I just did not have the energy to get out of the chair. Somehow I pulled myself up and out of the comfortable chair and made my wife and the doctor happy! Oh the good old days!

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