Unnaturally Disarming

Last night I stumbled back home around 10 PM or so. I wasn't inebriated, just exhausted. Played a few hours of basketball and drove myself to go all out all night. I didn't stumble on the court, just onto the porch of my house. As I walked up the steps one of my legs decided to mutiny and so I sort of fell into the door.

Suppose I should be happy that no one videotaped my inadvertent headbutt into the door. I learned two things from the experience.

1) I have a hard head. No bruise from the encounter and thankfully no headache.
2) The door isn't fragile. Intellectually I knew this, but I am a child trapped in a man's body so I like to test things to see if they really do work.

Once inside the mutinous leg decided that I am not Captain Queeg and rejoined the team. This was good as it made the shower that followed far more pleasurable. A short time later I wandered over to check on the children and marveled again at how peaceful they are when they sleep.

Simply amazing...I used to sleep like that, careless and fancy free. In general I still sleep well, but it is not uncommon for my dreams to slip and disturb that careless state of mind I sometimes miss. I kissed the kids and whispered in their ears and headed out to the computer. It was time to do some work.

Several hours later I strolled into the bedroom, lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. It was after 1 A.M. and I was wide awake and felt like I had enough energy to back to the gym. In the years prior to kids I might have done so, but I knew that in a few hours I had to get those kids out of bed.

So I did what I could to relax and try to fall asleep. It took a long time, but eventually I dozed off. And of course this coincided with the dark haired beauty's decision that she needed to sleep next to dad. Have I ever mentioned that she is like a 5.5 year-old version of the Tasmanian Devil?

The girl kicks and rolls and flails about...all night long. And of course she uses my body as her personal punching bag. The end result is that I decide I am too tired to deal with this and she is old enough to sleep by herself.

She didn't wake up because of a nightmare or because she didn't feel well. She woke up because she kicked off her covers and was cold. I picked her up and carried her to her bedroom. As soon as I put her down she jumped up and raced back to my bed. The little sneak had pretended to be asleep. Not only that, she had managed to help ensure that I got about three hours sleep last night.

And then to add insult to injury she wouldn't get up this morning. She moaned about being cold and whined about being tired. Since I am a kind man and never grouchy I growled and grunted something about giving away all of her toys and putting her to bed at 6 P.M. every night from today until 2098.

Did I mention that not only was I exhausted but incredibly sore. The endorphins from the night before were gone and all that remained were sore muscles that screamed at me for asking them to work hard.

As I stormed about the house I heard my son whisper, "abba is serious. Don't make him any angrier he is impossible when he is tired like this." I grimaced and wandered into the kitchen to make sure that their breakfast was underway.

And then from out of nowhere I felt these little arms circle around me and I looked down. Dark eyes peered back up at me, a little cherubic face smiled. Silently I cursed, in 5 seconds she had made my anger disappear. It is unnaturally disarming. It is not supposed to work that way. I am supposed to make the choice about whether to be angry or not.

Damn, damn, damn. I did my best to try not to smile and then she started laughing at me. It is not fair. She is using my tricks against me. I own the patent and the copyright on them and she still did it. Agrhhh.