Ready For My Burton Close-Up

Interior Monologue: "If I lay here nice and quiet and still, maybe my wife and son won't notice I'm awake. Slow....shallow breaths.....like Macaulay Culkin pretending to be dead in My Girl....nope bladder its not time to evacuate yet.....just keep sleeping, just keep sleeping, sleeping sleeping sleeping......Ihop would be nice right now, as long as they didn't mind me eating in my Batman pj pants and Ghostbusters t-shirt......I think it worked.....they have no idea you're awake too. Congratulations sir, well played, I use to be but the learner now I am the master."

Sadly Exterior Dialogue: "Mark, are you awake? It's 4 a.m. and our son is wide awake.......could you take him into the living room? Maybe if he watches Cars he'll go to sleep."

Little Voice Dialogue: "Cars!! Oh yeah I like the Cars!!! Cars!!! Peas dada, no seepy. Yeah"

Insert groan here.

Not my favorite way to start the day. Since our son had been whining and complaining and picking his mommy's nose with his toes for over an hour and the noise (both from his laughter and her telling him to stop) had woken me up completely it seemed somewhat heroic of me to do that for my wife so she could get some more sleep.

However, the feeling is gone now. 3 hours later, and my daughter is thankfully still asleep, my wife is still asleep in our warm flannel sheeted bed, using my tortilla pillows. No matter how nice the pillow is when I first buy it, the weight of my large head and of course the brain inside it, within two months that pillow is officially a tortilla. I could buy more, but not in this town, so instead I stack three of those things together while being envious of my wife and her fluffy pillow. I'm in the living room, cold of course as the temps outside are in the single digits, spending time with insomnia's best friend, T.V.

What? Where is my son you ask? Where else, asleep in my side of the bed. After 45 minutes of Cars he realized he was sleepy, can't figure out why, and while I was peeling myself an orange in the dark (Oh yeah, I have mad skills) kitchen, he snuck off with his teddy bear, blanket and sippy cup to lay in bed with mommy. When I left the kitchen I heard nothing but the sounds of Mater "Shhhhhooooooot, I'm the world's best backwards driver. Ha ha ha" and my two kids and wife, all snoring.

Its funny, that snoring, its not normal, I may be tired but I'm telling you the snoring sounds like a cacophonous nasal choir of taunting. They're laughing at me in their sleep. Oh the joys of family. No matter what I do I can't seem to drown out the snoring induced laughter coming from the two bedrooms, "Haaaaaaa ha, haaaaaaaa ha." "Ha ha haaaaa daaaaaaada." "Dada ha, dada ha, ha ha ha, dada ha."

I tried watching a new netflix, The Social Network. But, I've got to tell you, I do not see what all the hype was about. That movie is boring. I know I shouldn't have expected fast paced action from a movie about a nerd (who gives the name Mark a bad rep by the way) who creates facebook, but still its not an exact word for word action for action biography and I would have appreciated an explosion of some sort, a car chase maybe, possibly even a few fart jokes Klumps style. I can't stand those jokes, but even that is better than the few laughs the movie tried to get. I am so tired of the always predictable drug usage in every teen and young adult oriented movies. Not every young person breaks the law and delves into illegal drug use. Yet it seems like that's all people my age and younger do for fun. Its like the writer and director figured there wasn't a lot of laughs in the movie so they threw in a background shot of two girls using the biggest drug paraphernalia I've ever seen knowing that at least a few people will laugh. With really good movies last year like True Grit and The King's Speech, Inception and Toy Story 3, I really don't see why this one was so popular. Plus if I wanted to watch people arguing I'd still have cable and watch one of the dozens of terrible "reality" shows with unscripted yet still staged over the top drama. I turned it off.
I watched an episode of NCIS, and while I liked the explosion, I still couldn't get past the snoring in the background. So I grabbed the noise cancelling cordless surround sound headphones (had to buy them in seminary so I could watch movies while my wife did homework. I rarely spent more than an hour a night doing homework and she always had at least five hours of it) and started watching Tim Burton's Batman.

Now here I am at 7:15, finishing Batman Returns, knowing that any second my daughter, or my son, or my wife will wake up, rested and cheerful, sunny side up happy. There I'll be with my eyes darkened from lack of sleep in a way reminiscent of Tim Burton's favorite trademark sunken eyes on Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, struggling to smile like Christina Ricci in The Addams Family Values. Thank God for coffee. At least though, I had a chance to watch two of my favorite movies, and all before the time a sane person would normally arise from their slumber.

Here we go, the beginning of a day I've already begun. At least when they wake up, the taunting snores will stop. Coffee and Batman go well together.

BLT says.....oh the joys of family induced insomnia.