Caitlin's different in the dark.

Ironically, she recently learnt the word "Monsters!".

I went to sleep Tuesday night, and everything seemed fine. Around 02:30, or 02:15 or so, I awoke, realizing... something was wrong. I lifted my head, and looked behind me to the other side of the bed. My wife was missing. In her place was some creature, roughly 25 lbs, and it was waking up.

In the relative darkness, mistaking it for my beloved daughter, I reached out to it to try to ease it back to sleep.

Nein.

Nein, nein, nein.

This was not my daughter. It was quickly revealed to me that this was some kind of monster. Again, it was hard to see in the darkness, but I'm pretty sure this monster was a collection of three butts, and roughly a dozen little feet.

No matter how I tried to position it, or myself, it tossed, turned and squirmed so that there was always a diapered butt or a foot jammed in my face.

Giving up on it sleeping after an hour or so, I reached for the clicker, and turned the TV on to 'treehouse' The radiance of the TV washed over the room, and the monster was gone.

"Caitlin!" I declared, "How did you get here? Where's the monster? How did you fight it off?"

Caitlin righted herself from what looked to be a perpendicular sleeping position, looked at me, and started watching TV. After a while, she would tire, and go back to sleep. Waiting for that to happen, I turned towards her, away form the TV, and attempted to get some sleep.

NEIN!

"DA-EE, WAYUP! WAY-UP, DA-EE!" Wake up? Was the monster near? I could have sworn I felt one of it's feet jab me. With the TV still protecting us with its silent glow, I held Caitlin close, out of direct view of the TV. It seemed to be working. I reached to the clicker covertly, and turned down the brightness.

The next hour or so was a blur. There was light, there was darkness, the monster turned the fan off on me, causing me to melt. Must kung fu and perpendicular sleeping positions were attempted.

Eventually, I relented to the TV again, and while she watched it, I thought I may as well haul this laptop over and get something done, since my daring to sleep always resulted in the monster attacking, or Caitlin remanding me to wake up. Or to hammer my ribs with her elbow.

Shortly after I opened up my file to work on, Caitlin mistook the laptop for the monster, and attacked. After disarming that tussle, Cailtin's mommy arrived, and managed to get Caitlin to 'sleep' without the monster coming back. It took a while. and we spend much of the remaining time sleeping as a human H.

It's almost midnight now. Let's hope the monster doesn't come back tonight.



Yute news:

I'm at about 20% through THE FINAL PASS through the manuscript. Everything's moving along as planned.