Six Months

Today is Tate's and mine six month anniversary, and wouldn't you know it, he isn't here.  And I can't even call him to remind him.  Six months doesn't sound very long does it?  It seems much longer, but not in a bad way.  It just feels like we were meant to be married, and not in a cheesy-lovey kind of way.  It's just natural for us.  We argue, we solve, we move on, we laugh, we play, we learn.  These first six months have been nothing if not interesting.  I wouldn't do a thing different and I can't wait to see how the next six months (and more) are spent.

Grown Baby

I had a really wierd dream last night.  But, what's new?  I don't remember much of it, but I do remember that it had to do with a baby that was like a little man.  I know what this stemmed from; yesterday at work Ashton showed me pictures of her friend's baby and it looked like a little old grandpa. 

So, I dreamt that someone, and I don't know who, had this baby that was baby-sized and all, but that had a mustache and muscles and a very bad potty mouth.  I was babysitting the baby-man and he wasn't really mobile yet, but he kept yelling at me to do things and threatening to hit me and using foul language.  It was very wierd.  I think the mustache part of the baby was from Jason, a kid who I went to high school with who had a mustache since we were in elementary.  No joke.  The baby's face really looked like Jason.  Well, the mustache and freckles, anyway.

Nugent vs. Precious

This past Sunday I bought Tate an Australian Shepherd puppy.  He's a red merle with one green eye and one blue eye and he is absolutely adorable and so loveable!  I picked him up and went to my in-law's house, where Boog, their Jack Russel also resides.  Of course, Boog had to check out the puppy, who I cleverly named Nugent (yes, after Ted), but Nugent wasn't so happy about it.  This fluffy nine-week-old puppy started snarling and growling and snapping at Boog.  I could not believe this little furball was so fiesty!  But, that was only the beggining.

I finally got Nugent home that evening and took him in the backyard to play and potty.  This is the same backyard that Precious, the devilish calf lives.  Well, Nugent got all defensive when he saw the black monster moving towards him and started the same mantra as with Boog.  Precious didn't back down, though, at all.  She started closing in on the pup and the pup started getting nastier.  I got them apart and ran Precious off and all was okay, for the moment.

Now, when Nugent goes outside he strays away from the calf, but she hunts him down.  I'll try to sneak him outside and rush him around to go potty, but every time, I'll see her ugly little head ducked down as she creeps around the corner of the house.  When Precious spots Nugent she starts galloping towards him, turning to kick at him.  I've tried running her off by flapping my arms at her, shooing her and even hitting her over the head with a heavy-duty flashlight, but it's not working.  Each time I try to protect Nugent from the demon-cow she turns on me and starts kicking at me. 

This is not flying with me.  I want her slaughtered.  She's a good-for-nothing pooping machine that fertilizes my backyard and terrorizes Nugent.  I pleaded with my dad last night to come pick her up and make her a guard-cow for his shop.  He thought it was funnier than I did.  I think I may "accidentally" leave the gate open so she'll go play on the highway.  That would only work, though, if it didn't put people in danger.  I'd hate for someone to actually hit her.  I just want her to run away.  Far, far away. 

I won't actually let Precious of of the backyard or slaughter her, I'll just wish I could.  And continue to complain about her.

Melatonin

I travel for my job.  I go to colleges and high schools all over the state recruiting students to come to my university.  Some weeks I'm on the road five or six days.  I like getting out of the office and meeting all kinds of new people, but there's one small, well actually rather large, problem.  I fall asleep while I'm driving.  No one can figure out why.  It only happens between about 10a.m. and 6p.m.  All other hours I'm completely fine to drive.  The other wierd thing is, if I start to nod off while I'm driving and pull over or switch drivers, I'm completely alert.  It's like when moms take their babies on car rides to get them to go to sleep.  Driving does that to me.  So, understandably, you could see where I wig out a little bit about my chosen career (even though if I really had an option at this point, I would not have chosen this as my career). 

Because my traveling season is in full swing and I've already had a couple of dozing off incidents, I visited a doctor to try to find a solution.  She told me to start taking melatonin.  Because my crazy dreams often keep me from getting a good night's rest, melatonin should help me sleep deeper.  If you aren't familiar with melatonin, it's a chemical formed in your body that helps you sleep better.  You can get melatonin over the counter at Wal-Mart or Walgreens or anywhere like that.  We crossed our fingers and hoped it would help.

The first night, I took it about 30 minutes before I went to bed.  I was so drowsy that I could barely think straight or hold a coherent conversation.  As I slept, I had a very horrible dream.  It really upset me and I immediately tried to forget the violence that unfolded in my unconscious state.  The next night I was on the road and stayed in a hotel about two hours away from home.  I took the melatonin again and had the worst dream of all time.  Let me rephrase that:  the worst NIGHTMARE of all time.  It was an unspeakable sequence of events that made me sick in the morning when the memory of it crept up on me.  I never uttered a word of it to anyone and I never, ever will.  It was disgusting and violent and malicious and disturbing.  I decided right then it was the melatonin talking.  I was swearing it off.  It wasn't helping me sleep, it was making the dreams exponentially worse. 

A couple nights later, though, I decided to give melatonin another shot.  Just one more chance.  I have taken it about five nights since then and it's working like a dream.  Or, rather, not a dream at all.  I'm falling asleep faster, sleeping more peacefully, and waking up more alert.  I'm not doing any crazy hallucinating like some meds make you do, or sleeping so deeply that normal things don't wake me up.  So, I'm pretty happy with it now.  I'm still having dreams, but they aren't scary or crazy.  They are still wierd, don't get me wrong, but not like they have been.  I'm not really remembering them anymore, either.  I can remember having dreams and maybe one small thing like where I was or who was in it.  It's definitely been great to have such peaceful sleep of late, though.  I haven't been on the road extensively since this last round with the melatonin, so I don't know how effective it is at keeping me awake during the day, but I'm really praying it does the trick.

If you have trouble getting your best night's sleep, I'd definitely recommend getting you some melatonin.  I've also heard that drinking cherry juice helps, too. Cherry juice may contain lots of melatonin.  I'm going to look into that.