This Is Why I Don't Sleep Well At Night

As I have written before, there are plenty of reasons why I don't sleep well at night. The main reason is the small strip of bed that I get to sleep on. This of course is a direct cause of one little soon-to-be 5-year old using my back for unconscious kickboxing training during the night. However, neither of these nightly occurring events could hold a candle to what happened last night.

So in order to keep this from being a recurring event, I am going to put this out there to clear my head and hopefully keep such silly thoughts to rest.

Last night I dreamt my wife was pregnant. Yes, I know, that in itself is scary enough but it gets worse.

Last night my wife gave birth...

...to five snakes.

Not just any snakes, mind you, but those King Cobra things that can raise their heads up and look at you with that evil-looking grin on their faces. Now imagine waking up seeing five of those devilish things looking back at you.

I am getting the heebie-jeebies just writing this.

Somewhere during this dream there was a giant python that I figured out was supposed to signify me. Not because of the obvious reference to my manliness, but due to the fact that the python was the father of those five little slithering serpents.

Ok, now that python had better have been me.

I woke with a start and swearing I felt one of those snakes weaving around my feet AFTER I was awake. Ugh! I am not a snake person.

Never mind the fact that I find out later that Leslie's mother also had a dream that Leslie was pregnant - with a boy. Never mind the fact that Julia stated out of the blue that there is a baby in her mommy's belly. No, it's me that has the dream about Leslie giving birth to five freaking cobras for crying out loud.

Maybe I need to sleep on the coach for awhile. For the sake of my sanity as well as my back.

My record is now 1 win, 117 losses.

It doesn't matter how late she is up the night before or how sound asleep she is in the morning, when I am home and Julia needs to get up for school, all I have to say to get her up and going is one simple line:

"I guess I am going to beat you getting dressed."

You see, Julia has her mother's competitive gene. If there is even the mention of her getting beaten at anything...all of a sudden this stubborn little child turns into Super Girl determined to make you the loser of this challenge that lay before her.

Usually, once I say those words she is up and flying into her room, only to return two seconds later fully dressed before I had the time to get my bones to quit cracking. If I am really quick, I may get one sock on but that is all before she proceeds to taunt me with "I beat you! I beat you!" Everyday like clockwork, 100+ days during this school year - it was the same thing.

That was until a few weeks ago.

It was Julia's second to last day of school and while it appeared to be another normal morning with her dashing into her room to change into Beautiful School Girl, I noticed something odd. I was able to get both socks on...and pants with no Julia gloating.

"Everything ok, Julia?"

"Yeah, everything is fine."

I put my shirt on and snuck over to her bedroom door and peeked in. Julia was sitting on her bed - almost fully dressed, but just sitting there. I say almost because she had everything on except one arm in her shirt - and she seemed to be zoned out.

I took a few steps back and made enough noise to announce that I had finshed getting dressed and was heading downstairs for breakfast. Julia quickly exited her room fully dressed - complete with both arms in her shirt and exclaimed defeat...

"Oh Daddy, you beat me!"

Suddenly it hit me. She was sitting on that bed - probably for minutes - with that arm sticking out of her shirt waiting for me to finish getting dressed just so she could let me win this one time. As we walked down the steps together, I asked her about it.

"Did you let me win?"

She didn't answer with words, but with the biggest smile that melted my heart.

She gets that from her mom too.

The Running Grimms

Last Saturday was the very first 5k run by the Grimm husband and wife duo. After weeks and months of planning our strategy and training for just how we were going to run this event, I somehow lost my head - completely started the race too fast and was totally exhausted with one mile left to go. I can just imagine the runners that were passing me on during that final mile chuckling as I muttered to myself, "Stupid...Stupid...Stupid."

We may not have been the fastest, but we looked damn good.
In the end, we accomplished the goal we had set for ourselves back in early March - we ran an entire 5 kilometer race without stopping. And while my time was not my fastest (a 27:27), Leslie ran her best time ever with a 35:49! She even went so fast, she totally screwed up my plans of rooting her on from various points of the track after I finished - eventually causing me to miss her cross the finish line as a tried in vain to catch back up to her. D'oh!

Both of us even won door prizes afterward - I received one free game at the local bowling alley and Leslie got a free fish or chicken dinner from Long John Silver's. Now I can take her on one of those fancy dates - all I need is a pickup to make the evening complete.


Good grief, I run like an old man.
Leslie and I will continue to train for upcoming races as it has been an excellent way for us to shed the poundage. There is one in August for a muscular dystrophy charity (something I can relate to) and may run a few others in between. We have definitely caught the running bug and cannot wait to run more.


Leslie pushing towards the finish.
Thank you all for your support in us! Your awesome words of encouragement were truly more than just letters on a computer screen. They helped us every step of the way - from training on Day One to the finish line of the race - your comments have kept us going. So from my family to you...

THANK YOU!

Notice how Leslie is all smiles after the race, while I look like I am going to puke.

Kris Allen Wins American Idol

I'm not the kind of person to say I called it but...

Wait a minute...

I guess after my Super Bowl prediction, I am that kind of person after all. Maybe, just maybe, I need to hit Vegas with all of this newfound intuition. I could put Julia's college savings on the Cleveland Indians winning the World Series this year and make myself a fortune!

Of course in reality I would be broke...and divorced.

A little over a month ago there were seven American Idol contestants left and I wrote the following,

Kris Allen is the real deal and my vote to win this. I love how the man creates and molds songs to fit his style and when he sings, all of the rainbows of the world shine on him...er, sorry was channeling Paula there. But seriously, I think it will come down to him and Adam - exact opposites in my opinion - in the finals and I can see an upset in the works.

Granted I did not write this at the very beginning of the show or even after the Top 13 were chosen, but it was still early enough that when his name was called I was able to do a victory dance in the face of Adam's biggest fan my wife and gloat about it.

What is that? I am an adult and I should be above such immature things like gloating and teasing? Just how long have you been reading this blog? It is these very qualities that make my family tick and if I chose the high road for some strange reason, my wife would think there was something seriously wrong with me. That is just how we roll.

It's too bad that Kris has to start his career with that ridiculous song by Kara DioGuardi who continuously has done her best to embarrass herself this season. Still, my next prediction could be my best yet. I am going way out on a limb here, but I have this funny feeling that it will happen.

Kris Allen will have a better career than Taylor Hicks.

You heard it here first.

Hereditary Headbanger

Last night Lucy had one of her monumental outbursts where she flops around like a fish out of water. This is complete with throwing her head back in a fit of rage - usually resulting in her banging her poor head into something solid hence causing her to get even more pissed off...Rinse, repeat.

Leslie and her mom have been flabbergasted at this behavior. Sure they have seen children get mad, but never to the point of bringing additional injury to themselves with this head banging. I sit silently while they discuss among themselves knowing that while I never had the temper that Lucy has (that is ALL Leslie), I in fact did have my episodes of head banging as a child. This is something I am sure I will hereby get blamed for after Leslie reads this so I am going to get it out in the open now. Below is just a sample of some of the head trauma I have caused myself over the years.

• As an infant, I spent a few days in the hospital after I accidentally head butted my mother in the mouth - specifically her two front teeth. I hereby plead my innocence due to me being less than a year old and having absolutely no clue what was going on. However, it became a precedent apparently.
  
  
• I remember my father restoring an older Pontiac convertible when I was a young child. When he went to give a test drive I quickly volunteered to be his backseat passenger as my brother rode shotgun. Having never ridden in a convertible (that I recall), I remember bouncing on the backseat feeling the wind against my face. That was until the car hood flew open, smacking my head and slam dunking me back into the seat. No blood, just a HUGE knot.
  
  
• In grade school, I fell off the top of an 8-foot slide, again on my noggin' leaving another nice-sized knot. No wonder my head is so damn lumpy.
  
  
• As a teen, I went for a ride in a car with my brother and my uncle in the back of our property. I guess I shouldn't say in the car, but rather on it as I was hanging on for dear life on the hood. A couple of doughnuts later and a was flying backwards through the air giving the back of my melon a real good smack upon landing.
  
  
• This was followed a few years later by falling out of a tree in the front yard and doing a perfect face plant on the ground below. To this day there is still a dent in the yard from where my face hit. I think my father keeps it as a warning for his grandchildren.
  
  
• In my twenties in would be softball as my main nemesis. I took a line drive off of my skull while pitching that if it were two inches lower it would have drilled my temple and probably left me in pretty bad shape. Luckily, it just caused an enormous growth out of the side of my head - complete with lace marks from the softball. This may have been my first documented concussion, but I highly doubt my first in my life.
  
  
• Softball would strike again as I took a shot from a thrown ball off of the eyebrow. This is only significant because of all of the head injuries I have sustained, this was the only one to cause me to bleed. Until then I was merely a conglomeration of lumps, bumps and knots.

So as I watch my youngest go through her angry phase of being a one-year old, I hope that God has blessed her with my hard shell of a skull. I am truly hoping she doesn't follow her father's path of cranium carnage and that this is just a passing phase.

And to my wife, who may wonder way I sometimes do the things I do, say the things I say, or forget the things I forget - let the above issues give me just a tiny bit of leeway.

I need all of the excuses I can find.

Running For Our Lives

So Leslie and I have been running at the track for the last 2-3 months in preparation for our first 5K run coming up in less than 2 weeks. Our stamina is improving, our distance is improving and our times are subsequently improving as well. So last week, we decided to take our running outdoors to see what the differences may be.

Being that we have both upped our training to every other day, this little experiment would be done apart as I would be running while staying at my father's while working last weekend. That being said, I charted me course and measured out 3.1 miles driving along the housing development next to my father's house to get an idea of how long it would be.

Now, I have been running the full 5K at the track for about 2 weeks, but damn...I never realized it was THAT far. (All of you marathon runners quit your snickering, I haven't ran this much in close to 20 years.)

Once the course was planned out, I quickly changed into my ultra cool running outfit (it actually makes me look like I can run! How quickly they will learn!) and began to loosen up. My father showed up, looked at me in my outfit and chuckled (I think he was jealous) and asked me what I was planning. I told him that I was going for a quick run and that I would be back in about 30 minutes.

I began my first 5K outdoor journey and noticed a few problems with the outside world that I had not yet come across while running on a indoor track. Most of these are common sense items, that somehow escaped my frame of thought, while one or two were a complete surprise. I shall now enlighten you with my lessons learned.

• Hills - Yep, right of the bat. You would have thought I would have saw this coming while measuring the distance in the car - but nooooo. Needless to say I was huffing and puffing after only a few hundred feet - and I still had three miles to go. Aw, crap.
  
  
• Wind - I manage to somehow overcome the first obstacle and make my first left turn onto the next run when WHAM! I hit a pretty stiff breeze right in the face. Now, I appreciate a nice breeze to cool me off now and again, but this wind seemed to hold me in place - teasing me - and making it seem to make twice the effort to go half as far.
  
  
• Sweat - At the indoor track, they keep the temperature relatively cool to where sweat isn't a major issue until after you stop. Outside, I wasn't as lucky. I was barely into my trek when the sweat began to pour into my eyes making it impossible to see. I wore no hat or headbands. I brought no towel. The shirt I was wearing was skintight and soaked. So I was left looking like Popeye with one eye clenched shut and the other opened just enough to see any cars before they ran me down.
  
  
• Bugs - Unbeknownst to me, there was a rainstorm coming and the bugs were in full force. I am pretty sure I ate two and at least five other winged devils bounced off my forehead at various times throughout the run. This does not include the many new dance steps I attempted swatting at the bugs around my ankles all while trying not to break stride and ruin my rhythm.

In spite of all of this, I completed the run and felt extremely good afterwards. I called Leslie and told her of my endeavor and I heard her mumble "Dammit" under her breath in response. I think she had expected me to back out, but once she knew I had done it - she would have to. That is how she rolls.

So we are a mere 10 days away from this run and we are both nervous and excited about doing this. It's hard to believe that just six months ago I would have laughed uncontrollably at the thought of running a 1K not to mention a 5K.

But here we are, fulfilling a commitment to each other and ourselves.

This Payback Is Gonna Be Brutal

I am not much of a night owl, this I will admit. Without a nap, 10:00pm is my limit when it comes to staying up at night. I know what you are thinking, after years of working the midnight shift I should be able to stay up until the wee hours of the morning with very little effort. In reality, I believe, the opposite is true - the reason I can't stay up on my days off is a direct result of this third shift work history.

Leslie, on the other hand, hits her stride at night. Although she would argue that this is the only time she gets to write on her blog (this is true), I believe her ulterior motive is to weaken me.

On Julia's school days, I get up at 8:00am, usually after staying up close to midnight the night before. I know, eight hours sounds like a good night's rest - but when you have about two inches of bed to lay on and a soon-to-be 5-year-old has implanted her knees into the small of your back, well a restless sleep is about the best thing you can hope for.

So most mornings I am tired and sleepy. As I am sure 90% of America is - even my wife.

After dropping off Julia, Leslie and I work out. Sometimes it's as easy as walking four miles, other times its running for 30 minutes without a break. So, needless to say, when we are done, I am even MORE tired.

For most of the school year, I have driven. And most of the time I would have a sleeping wife and two snoozing daughters in the back seat on the drive home. I sometimes chide my wife about this, telling her that with everyone sleeping - who is supposed to keep ME awake? Nonetheless, there were no issues with them dozing - I drove, they slept - No problems.

Lately, I have been "letting" Leslie drive us so I can actually experience the passenger seat once in awhile. I don't get to do this very often as it seems that I am driving everywhere so these mornings are a treat for me. Likewise, on the trips home it gives me a chance to tilt my head back and rest - much like my wife has done before. I had never actually fallen asleep while doing this...

...until yesterday.

I awoke from my haze gradually and glanced over at my significant other who happened to have a big grin on her face. It was then that I felt this piece of balled up paper that unmistakably felt like a chewing gum wrapper sitting in my mouth.

Apparently, I fell asleep with my mouth open and the love of my life decided it would be fun to play basketball with her unconscious husband.

She is a pretty good shot.

I removed her basketball wrapper as uncontrollable laughter overcame her. Of course her defense was that it was ONLY a wrapper and that it wasn't anything bad. But to do this to her unsuspecting (and not awake) husband was just plain mean. She says that I am just mad because I didn't think of it first. I told her that she was right - I hadn't thought about it...

...until now.

So when she slips on her running shoes tomorrow and finds those slices of banana inside that I left for her - I hope she won't be too mad. Or when she turns on the hair dryer to find that I have packed it full of baby powder - I hope she won't be too upset. Maybe when finds the dead flies in her shampoo she may be a little ticked, but she shouldn't.

It's only because she hadn't thought of it.