Sleep does different things to me.

If I have to get up early to go somewhere like a trip or hunting, I pop right out of bed. I function fine. I don’t even need any coffee. You might even say I’m chipper.

However, if I’ve recently drifted off to sleep and I am suddenly woken up, I am completely out of it. I will be in a stupor and will say and do strange things.

Having a baby in the house again has brought back all the fun of being woken up from a dead sleep.

Sunday night was a perfect example.

We were very tired so we went to bed early, hitting the sack at 10pm. Around 10:30, Mei woke up crying. My job is always to take the first shift with her, so the crying over the baby monitor woke me up from blissful sleep.

I was able to stumble into Mei’s room and managed to pick her up. A few seconds later, we were in the kitchen getting a readymade bottle out of the fridge. Then I plopped down in our oversized chair in the living room to feed Mei her bottle.

As is customary, I promptly fell asleep the moment she was finished with the bottle. She will hand it to me and then curl up on my chest. It doesn’t take long for us both to be fast asleep.

Once again I was in the early blissful stage of sleep when the phone rang. I knew it wasn’t terribly late and I had some reason to think it may be important, so I got up out of the chair, with Mei in my arms and headed back into the kitchen.

I fumbled around, but found my cell phone and said hello. As I stood there I became aware that the phone was still ringing. It wasn’t my cell after all. I instinctively dialed Jon’s number, thinking it was him trying to call. A few rings of his phone and I gave up and tried to find the land line down in the den.

Still carrying a sleeping Mei, I went down to the den just as the call was going to our answering machine. It was a prerecorded message stating that I had a collect call from the Dougherty County Jail. If I wanted to accept the call I should press 1 and if not then I should press 2.

Now I was thoroughly confused. As I sat there in the den trying to figure out who would be calling me from prison, Jon called me back. He had seen that I’d tried to call.

Jon: It’s a little past your bedtime isn’t it?

WK: Um, yeah. Hey, you’re not in jail are you?

Jon: Nope I’m sitting here watching the game. You ok?

Wk: I’m not sure. I’m kind of out of it and someone was trying to call me from jail. Any idea who it might be?

Jon: Nope. Go back to sleep

That was a good idea. Mei had slept through the entire event, so I went to put her back to bed.

The second, and I do mean the second, her head hit the pillow, her eyes popped open and she started to cry again.

With a heavy sigh, I picked her up and headed back to the oversized chair in the living room. Within a few minutes, yep you guessed it, we were both sound asleep.

About an hour later, I finally woke up and managed to put her to bed and crawled back into my bed.

It was a weird night, but except for the phone call it was typical of what goes on around here each and every night.