The Sleepwalker

Lindsey is a sleepwalker and it is getting more and more bizarre by the night.  This is something that I am pretty sure I have never written about even though it happens pretty consistently.  Actually, she sleepwalks in cycles.  She won’t do it for months and then all of a sudden she does it every night for months.  She’s peed on floors (this has even happened when she’s been at someone else’s house), she yells out strange things and she gets up to ask us things that make absolutely no sense.   One night Don and I heard a loud noise and we went in her room to find her climbing her dresser drawers as if they were a mountain.   I am not letting her go camping this month with her Girl Scout troop because last time she went she put on her boots and tried to leave the cabin in the middle of the night—that would scare any mother to death!  Of course, like many sleepwalkers she remembers nothing in the morning and she thinks that it's funny, unless she pees somewhere strange.

Friday night she got up and I immediately heard her walking around.  I sat up in my bed and saw her come in.  She said “Let me get my yearbook so you can sign it.”  Next thing I know I’m running into the bathroom to help her get to the toilet, but I was too late.  She was in the shower peeing with her underwear on.  I washed her off, changed her clothes, and put her back to bed.  She had no recollection of the incident the next morning, of course.  Last night she got up around midnight and told me that she couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t true because she was already asleep!  I said “Go back to bed, Lindsey.  You’re sleepwalking.”  She grabbed her ChapStick that she had left in my room and went back to bed.  At that moment I thought that maybe she really was awake and I had mistaken her for sleepwalking because it seemed like such a conscious thing to do, picking up something that she’d left on my dresser, but I was wrong.  She came back in with her “ChapStick” (which I realize now was really a very tinted, frosted Lip Smacker) ALL over her mouth.  When I say all over her mouth I mean that she was probably wearing more than Bozo the Clown wore in the 80's.  I took her to the bathroom and I wiped it off.  She said “Um, can I go back to bed now?”  I just laughed and walked her back to bed.  Five minutes later I heard a loud noise.  I went to her room and she was in the middle of taking all of her pillows off of her bed and putting them on the floor in the doorway.  I put them all back and picked her up and put her back into bed.  That was all that happened last night, thankfully.  Geez!  If it isn’t the boys waking me up it’s my ten-year-old! 

I used to sleepwalk.  I used to have nightmares and I'd get up crying while trying to explain them to my parents.  Like Lindsey, I often said strange things that didn’t make sense.  One night I went out the backdoor and woke up long enough to realize what I was doing, which was very scary.  I went back into the house and my mom was standing there about to beat me over the head with a crowbar because she thought that I was a burglar, but I had fallen back asleep and just went to bed.  The difference between me and Lindsey is that although I wasn’t in control of myself while I was sleepwalking, I often remembered having done it once someone reminded me.  Lindsey never remembers.  Sleepwalking can be very scary.  I remember being afraid to go to sleep every night because I was afraid that I would wander outside and get hit by a car.  It made going to slumber parties a scary experience as well. 

I am sure that some of you, (Mom, Dad, and Katie) remember me sleepwalking or talking in my sleep.  Katie, didn't I do something really weird when I was a teenager?  I don't know why I think that, but I remember something happening and you made fun of me.  Sometimes I still talk in my sleep and wake myself up, or Don will ask me what I said and I get frustrated trying to remember.  When I was in college I would often fall asleep on the couch.  When Don would try to move me to the bed I would throw my fist up like I was going to punch him in the face.  His laughing woke me and I would then realize what I was doing.   I haven't done anything like that since I've had the boys because I never sleep that sound.  I know that I only did it when I was very tired and I am sure that's what's going on with Lindsey.   I hope that she grows out of it.  However, it's a good excuse to keep her at home, especially when she is a teenager!   

Here's the Word of the Day:

longueur \long-GUR\, noun:
A dull and tedious passage in a book, play, musical composition, or the like.