Exhaustion

1. You can hallucinate.

There is nothing worse than being tired.  Uh, well actually there are thousands of things that are worse than being tired.  Like being lit on fire.  Or running head first into a wall.  How about this....being tired sucks.  I am not a morning person.  Sleep is awesome.  Weekends are the greatest.  Stay up until midnight or 1am and then sleep until 11am.  So great!  My wife would beg to differ.  She is more of a go to bed at 9:30pm and wake up at 6am.  No, thank you.  There is nothing going on at 6am!

One thing I have learned in the past few weeks is that due to lack of sleep, you can actually hallucinate. Like you are on drugs.  Disclaimer...I have never taken hallucinogenic drugs.  But we have all seen those dumb movies with the "tripping" scene.  I believe it is a law that every "road trip" movie must contain one.  The late night feedings of a young baby human being do take a toll on you.  In the beginning, we would wake up together.  Ape would feed King Henry.  I would prepare the diapers and get everything ready to go.  I would also handle the burping.  A few weeks of this at night and no naps during the day lead to a little bit of nutty behavior.  One of these side effects happens to be hallucinations.  I have noted this on about 7 different occasions with Ape.  I have caught myself hallucinating once so far (don't worry, I will share).  A typical "occurrence" would go as followed.....

INT - MASTER BEDROOM - MIDDLE OF NIGHT

Martin and April are tired from taking care of their new baby human being.  It is the middle of the night when April wakes up and says....

APRIL

Martin, will you take Henry from me and put him in his bassinet?

MARTIN

What did you say, Ape?

APRIL

I am just so tired, Martin.  Could you just take Henry from me and put him in his bassinet?

Martin attempts to get up.  Groggily, he finally sits up in the bed.  Due to his partial blindness and the fact that it is pitch black in their room, he squints to find Henry.  He leans closer to April and uses his hands to feel for him.  He is not there.  Panic sets in just as his eyes are adjusting to the darkness.  Martin gets out of bed and quickly walks to the bassinet to see Henry is sound asleep.

MARTIN

Ape, Henry is in the bassinet?!

APRIL

Wait, what?!?!?

MARTIN

Henry was not sleeping in your arms.  Your were dreaming.

15 second pause

APRIL

(deep sigh)

Oh my gosh.

This stems from April taking care of Henry in the dream world and it crossing over in the real world.  I cannot blame her.  Her entire life right now is Henry... and she is awesome at it.  Another instance involved April asking ME to take Henry from "Martin."  I asked her who she thought I was?  Needless to say, neither one of the MEs had Henry.  Once again, he was asleep in his bassinet.

My hallucination was also due to a dream.  As a prequel to this story, Henry has slept next to me for a few hours before.  I lay on my side with the my arm extended.  I put Henry next to my chest and he uses my bulging and manly adequately sized bicep as a pillow.  So, I guess in my dream I had put him next to me to calm him down.  The next thing I know, I'm awake.  I am laying on my side with my arm extended.  Henry is nowhere to be seen.  In his place is a pillow laying on my arm.  Panic, again, sets in.  Check underneath the pillow.  Not there.  Look on the floor to see if he has fallen off (how freaking horrible would that be?).  Not there.  Then, I realize it must be a dream.  I sit up in bed and can see him sleeping in his bassinet.  Ridiculous.

Are we crazy normal?  Sadly, I think I know the answer. 

FYI: The picture above is from THE MACHINIST.  That would be Christian Bale weighing around 100 lbs. in his role as a "machinist" who is slowly going nuts-o due to lack of sleep.  See the correlation?  Anyway, great flick.  Great actor.