Michelle and Mandy Better Watch Their Backs

In one of my very first posts, I told you about how annoying entertaining my family is in the wee hours of the morning.

Based on what happens at night in our house, *occasionally* I am grumpy in the daylight hours.

Sometimes, I sleep really well, but I just wake up super pissed off, though.  I don't know if it's bad dreams I've had that I just don't remember.  I don't know if the magic sleep fairy sprinkles me with angry dust.  I don't know if actually I'm just an angry, hateful person down deep, but sometimes..... I just  wake up mad.  Not little mad, either.  Great, big honking, if-you-speak-to-me-wrong-I-may-ask-for-a-divorce kind of mad.  I never wake up mad at The Kid...it's always Big Daddy I'm mad at, bless his  little sleep-talking heart.

Several years ago, I was awakened to the sound of Big Daddy, moaning and whispering the name Michelle. Just in case, you guys have gotten confused like he did, my name is Kristi, not Michelle. At three in the morning that night until sunrise the next morning, I fixated on the fact that my husband, lying in bed so peacefully, snoozing away, a smile on his face, was dreaming about some girl named Michelle.  

I wanted to strangle him.

The next day was not pretty in my house.  I asked him, in no uncertain terms, what exactly he was dreaming about, who in the hell Michelle was, and why in the HELL he was dreaming of her, because it sure did sound like HE was having extra-marital fun.  He genuinely looked perplexed.   He told me he didn't know a Michelle. Since Big Daddy is the truthful sort, and since I had checked his phone,  his Facebook contacts, his twitter feed, knew his coworkers, and knew that at his core, he is a rather antisocial guy who never went anywhere without me or our child, I believed him.

Sort of.

It was a good thing, we didn't actually meet any Michelles in our social circle until years later, because I would have had to cut them.

With a rusty disposable razor.

Soaked in salt water.

And battery acid.

Wrapped in a towel infested with chiggers.

Wow.  I sound violent.  

Whatever.

Girls and Big Daddy, remember THAT in case you decide to play together.

So last night, I was awakened at 4:06 A.M.  by the sound of every demented, demon-possessed ghost doll in a horror movie ever howling in my ear.   Big Daddy was keening in the creepiest way. It didn't even sound like his normal voice.   He was howling in this high-pitched banshee voice and moaning.

"Hurts!  Hurts!!   No!  No!  Tell Mandy!  Hurts!"  Then he dissolved into more moaning and indistinguishable words.

He honestly sounded like he was in pain.  I hesitated, though.  Are you supposed to wake up people having a nightmare or not?   My sleepy brain remembered that it's sleepwalkers you're not supposed to wake up, so I quickly started shaking him.  He began to moan and make worse noises.

"Hurts!"

"Wake up!   Wake up!  You're okay.   It's just a dream.  Wake up. Wait... Who's Mandy?  Seriously, wake up, now.  Who's Mandy?"   Big Daddy had woken up just in time for the realization to hit me that we don't know a Mandy.   I have a cousin named Mandy, but Big Daddy's never met her.   

He blinked at me a couple of times, confused. 

"I didn't say Mandy."   

"Oh yes, you did!"

"I would know what I said."

"You were asleep, screeching like a prepubescent girl.  You don't know anything."

Then he started telling me his dream....

He was in an apartment and Anthony Edwards, the tall doctor from ER, was there.   The door to the apartment opened, and a group of Hispanic construction workers came in.  With them, came hundreds and hundreds of red wasps.  They began to sting Big Daddy on his face. Half of his face became paralyzed, so he started calling  out of the side of his mouth for help. The wasps weren't stinging anyone else, but no one moved to help him.  

 "Hurts!  Hurts!  No! No!   Too many!  Hurts!" he cried.  Then he became totally paralyzed by the venom as the wasps stung him over and over.   

As I laid there listening to him recount his dream, I was trying to piece together the sounds my woken-from-a-dead-sleep ears thought they heard and the words he had actually said out of the side of his face in his demonic jack-in-the-box voice.  

Too many. Tell Mandy.   

It was the same.  

Damn good thing too.   'Cause Mandy better watch her back.

I'm on to her.