For the updates (Feb 20, 2014) on What’s woken up Paul tonight skip down a page or two, for what this whole thing is about, read on.

As part of a multi-week product review I’m working on for my other blogging gig I now have a device on me that tells me how much I sleep, how well I sleep, and more importantly how little I sleep. It does some other stuff, but we’ll review that when we review that.

Psst… If you’ve wondered why there and here have not been updated by me much lo these past week, looking at three boxes of tissue down for this flu alone. Writing has been hard.

As a 30+ year sufferer of insomnia who’s tried most of the drugs on the market and not managed to find anything that did more than make me tired and bored while I couldn’t sleep, or make me dumb enough to accept that gosh I’m tired, I’ve gotten into the habit of just catching little naps when I can.

This has nearly been eliminated by my spawn’s nap cycles as I can’t match her speed to nap nor recovery time. It takes me an hour to get to sleep minimum.

Due to lack of rest I’m also catching every cold, flu, disease that comes in via my little precious contamination express, and I don’t think there exists at this point any level short of CDC zombie protocol level space suit that would prevent me from getting a hoary host of devilish diseases never before inflicted on my previously homeschooled and subsequently incorrectly antiobioticed ass.

For a less alliterative version not read in Stan Lee’s voice: I had a doctor growing up who put me on antibiotics the instant I got a sniffle. For those who do not know, antibiotics cause your immune system to not properly record how to handle a disease. They also have no effect on viruses, or severe mold allergies which I suspect was the cause of my woes growing up. Actually they do have an effect on allergies, and that is to enhance the hell out of them. I was also homeschooled and did not have access to all the good germs.

I feel that lack of sleep and subsequent illness is making me a bad parent. -me, right here

But let’s circle back to the point of this article, which will be frequently updated until such time as it’s not. There’s been something I’ve been noticing a trend in lately, and that’s that I’m getting woken up more and more by rather bizarre things. After I’m woken by a bizarre incident I process it, can’t get it out of my head, and finally have to get up and do something until I can.

These incidents, with the inclusion of the ones below, include waking up to see two cats collide in mid-air only to land on either side of a cup of water, being questioned on whether or not I hear the baby crying, loud male voice yelling in baby’s room, and a host of other odd things that my brain couldn’t put down or my ears couldn’t put up with.

So here’s the list, updated as new things appear:

What’s woken up Paul tonight?

20140220: I vaguely heard something at 1:40, then I got punched in the eye by an infant who was being placed next to me. Over the next half hour this infant expanded to fill the entire bed. I finally got up, took her back down to bed, and put her there. There was no fussing, and she slept another 5 & 1/2 hours. No idea why I was subjected to being punched. Up for a couple of hours at that point.

20140217: According to my watch I slept almost eight hours. My watch is a filthy filthy liar. I laid in bed for a good three hours tossing and turning. Screw you deep sleep reporting watch. You lie.

This after being so tired I was about to pass out at 10:20pm… then 11:50 came around… then 1… blah.

20140215: baby went down hard before 7pm tonight. We tried waking her up to keep her going until eight, but that had us a miserable crying baby so I caved with the expectation that I’d probably be up at 4am with a baby. Close, 1am.

Fortunately she just wanted a diaper change as we had not planned at 6 when she started falling asleep that she would be down that long.

Unfortunately I’m now wide awake after sleeping two hours.

20140212: body just decided eff it, no reason to bother trying to sleep any more. As far as I can tell I fell asleep for all of 10 minutes during a show I wanted to see. It’s nearly 6am now, watch claims I slept two hours but it’s a filthy lying bastard.

20140211: Tonight’s sleep problems comes to you courtesy of the letter D, as in Claritin-D.

In an effort to fix my ear the doctor has given me a drug that causes me to bounce off the wall.

So, not exactly woken up tonight, but it’s 3am and I feel like dancing.

Night total: 2 hours 58 minutes sleep. Day total another 2 hours.

20140210: It’s 2am, I awaken to the realization I’m soaked and freezing. Yay flu. Air out covers as much as possible, oddly dries pretty quickly and I got back to sleep normally.

4am wake up to the sounds of explosions, realize I’m hearing them in one ear only so I don’t flip out. I’m having a significant sinus event in my right ear and it sounds like fireworks.

20140209: Morning. Baby placed next to me, baby coughs, projectile vomits causing sheets and me to be covered in hork, requiring early morning laundry. Baby covered in hork requiring early morning bath. Bathtub filled with poop mountain requiring cleaning. Two diapers and a clean baby later.

4 hours 27 minutes of sleep. Oddly more than I’d expected.

20140209: With one ear completely stuffed up from this flu, it’s like a have a pillow on both ears when I’m sleeping and facing left, which I was at about midnight.

“Did you hear that?” – ITMama

No, I’m pretty much deaf when facing left, we discussed this before we went to bed what?

“Sounded like gunshots.”

Phone rings, it’s the neighbor, I have to inform him that I did not hear that, that ITMama did, to call the police and I was going to look out the window and would let him know if I see anything. My cat has decided to not return tonight which is odd and the area seems deathly quiet… oh wait, I can’t hear anything…

Police start a search in the neighbor’s area, but with gunshots on a cold night it’s more likely to be further away, my expectation is the Mapco a block away was robbed.

I spend a couple of hours straining to hear anything in case there’s someone scuttling around our neighborhood. The cat has fled or was involved in the shootout, I’ve got to hope he’s just fled and will make it back to our territory soon enough. I check the front door a few times.

It’s too dark and I’m way too weak still to go out and poke around the area looking for brass, so instead I write this. Total sleep as of 4am: 1 hour 12 minutes. Added issues with medication wearing off, taking a hot shower to try to declog sinuses, etc.

20140208: I am awoken by an irate ITMama who’s just getting sick asking if I could not hear the baby crying. Well, no, I couldn’t, I’m half deaf at the moment and if I’m facing left, it’s like there’s no sound going to reach me. Awww yeah.

Baby needs rocking, has lost too much weight being sick, I worry about her. She’s mostly better the next day but am up for four hours feeling like a bad dad for not having taken her into the doctor that day. I’d assumed based on how she was progressing she would be over it at that point, but that was delayed by a day.

Suddenly I wonder why I was woken by ITMama with a question as opposed to her handling baby.

20140206: Catstard Hammy sings the songs of his people, will not stop, finally get up to let him out and can’t find him anywhere. Search runs five minutes, damage to my sleep runs hours.

20140205-08: general sickness wakes me, not having used my brain to brain in two weeks makes me feel fat, old, sick, depressed, and I run through that realizing I hate the whole thought spiral while I’m sick. Worse when there’s a fever involved.

20140202: Jomo goes insane, runs around the house at full psycho kitty at 1am for about an hour. We take it, along with the sinkhole news, as a sign to get out emergency baby kit ready. We’re not Doomsday Preppers by any means, but pretty confident that at some point we’re going to need to be able to handle two or three days without power, electric, food, etc.

20140110: The Bluetooth calls out for blood… I mean a charger, and it takes ~20 minutes of wandering the house ready to poke anyone with a stick that’s yelling at my baby before I can figure out that it’s just a stupid device cranked to 10 broadcasting at 10 that it’s low on battery.

20140120: Angelcare monitor no longer reads Maggie, so it goes off when she traverses the crib in her sleep. Woken up three nights by an alarm telling me my baby is no longer moving. Baby is woken up three nights by an alarm that’s pissing her off.

Temp solution is turn it off. A couple of nights spent waking up wondering if she’s ok, staring at the Foscam for signs of movement that eventually happen. Resolve to get that fixed, unfortunately baby’s sleeping on top of the sensor the next seven times I remember.

20131213:  1:28am December 12th 2013. I was recently awoken because Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church has decided it’s time to start banging drums, playing brass, and otherwise violating every noise ordinance there is as you can hear them two blocks away. I had wondered what the deal was with loud vehicles parading past my house for the past hour, I guess now I know as their parking lot appears full.

From surveys of the neighborhood they got about 15 complaints in five minutes as they woke everyone in the hood up.

In the several years this church has been there, there has never been a 1am parking lot brass ensemble jam. I’m told they could be heard five blocks away. Yay God?

201309XX: I’ve heard of night terrors before, but I’d never seen them up close. We had a thankfully very short run of night terrors that were not resolvable by anything other than letting her wake up crying hysterically and slowly come to while crying.

She would go back to sleep afterward, but it would take a very long time for me to calm down and after each incident I’d read more on it.