6AM-Saturday-Wide Awake

Sometimes life just isn't fair but I'll get to that in a minute.

Jenna has this crazy thing she says periodically. Whenever we have any big or even semi-big event happen she always asks "Don't you feel like a grown-up?" The most recent example is our new bedroom furniture. When it was delivered she was so excited because somehow in her brain having a matching set of nightstands, bed, and dresser officially moved us into the ranks of adulthood. Never mind the marriage, mortgage, 3 dogs, 3 y/o son, pregnancy, and the fact that we are in our mid-30s. That was all practice for having bedroom furniture.

An odd segway but here I am on a Saturday morning a little after 6. My son is spending the night with grandparents. I'm 1 1/2 weeks away from a new baby in our life with all the sleeplessness that entails. I'm wide awake.

I certainly didn't mean to. I polished off a bottle of wine last night. I stayed up a little too late. I didn't set an alarm and my last thought last how wonderful it was going to be to sleep in with the Razorback game being at 6PM and how late Noah and I would get in.

I wake up too early some mornings but I can just lay still and my mind wanderings will eventually turn to a dream and back off to sleep I go. Sometimes the brain just won't turnoff. I woke up in that half sleep and started to think. I thought about last night and the homemade pizzas and the Italy Blu-Ray reliving our honeymoon. It was similar to a 'last hooray' before the new baby, although I was the only one who could toast.

Despite these thoughts I was still half asleep when my mind wandered to work but I know better to think about work so I quickly put myself on a golf course. Playing an imaginary round of golf is my equivalent of counting sheep. This worked for awhile but then I made a tragic error.

I thought about some speeches I'll have to give soon. Last year I had to speak at a few events here and there. This year it will be many more. The ones with the most people aren't bad. I'm only 1 of several people and we have a script. Being on the start stage of the race for the cure speaking to 18,000 people sounds bad but I get to read from a script so it's really not.

The scary ones are the small groups of people at a lunch and they ask you to come in and speak. One time last year I was asked if I would speak about the "Role of the husband during crisis." I said yes and then I when I was alone I was "What?!?" which quickly led to "WTF?!?!?!?"

The only reason I'm telling you this was because in the instant I thought about these upcoming speeches I had a good idea. I lay there thinking through the whole idea and soon it fleshed out into a great idea. I even had my starting joke an a witty remark in the middle that I actually giggled when I thought of it.

I'm just laying there in bed formulating something I'll say in a few months-not next week-a few months-like after Christmas. Then a funny thought interjects. "You should write this down." I panic. I thought this was a safe thought pattern to follow but now I know the error of my ways, because the instant those words were 'spoken' I was awake. I want to go back to sleep. I want to think about something else. I want anything in this world rather than get out of this bed. Then a slightly twisted version of the thought popped in my head. It's like the Wizard of Oz has a curtain behind my eardrums or something. "You have to write this down."

So here I sit at the keyboard at 715 after having written not 1 but 2 versions of the speech (a 5 minute and a 10 minute). I guess I couldn't stop typing so I wanted to put my plight here. Now I'm wide awake with my wife still asleep. The dog's are asleep. My son isn't even here. Then the damn Oz guy in my ear says, "You should go for a run."

When Jenna wakes up I owe her an apology. I feel like a grown-up.