But do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids?

Okay, this new-baby-lack-of-sleep thing is getting old. Last night I handled Coop's 2:30 and 6:30am feedings. The feedings themselves weren't so bad, but the kid is so bound up (I am no longer using the term Gershon'd -- that is so November...) that he spent most of the night grunting and straining like one of those little midget Greek powerlifters in the Olympics. Needless to say, it's tough to sleep through that. On the upside, his clean-and-jerk is up to about 260 kilos.

This period with Savannah was so much easier, because we didn't have an older child to care for everyday. That meant if work was light (and boy was it!) that we could sleep in every morning. Not so right now. Sleep or no, we've got a four-year-old in our faces every morning clamoring for cartoons and chocolate milk. With this lack of sleep, Kelli and I are getting very... shall we say, terse? Our temptation is to say to Savannah, "aren't you able to get yourself fed, dressed and drive yourself to school, yet? What? You're only four? Well, that's no excuse!"

We're so edgy, I got mad at Santa Claus last night while watching "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." It's that part at the end -- you know, when Santa's off his Zoloft and has developed an eating disorder -- when the fog has rolled in over the North Pole, and Santa decides that Christmas should be cancelled. What? There's never been fog at the North Pole before? It's covered with ice! If the temperature gets above about ten below, there's going to be fog.

So, Santa makes his declaration in the movie, and suddenly I imagine myself as the lone disgruntled elf: "Cancelled? Son of a b****! You mean I just wasted a whole year of my life for nothing? You know what this? You know what it is, old man? It's the four P's -- Piss-Poor Prior Planning! Have you ever thought of, oh I don't know, HEADLIGHTS!? I tell you what, Karen Carpenter, give me the suit. Give me the suit and that stupid hat and I'll deliver the toys myself. If I crash and burn, who cares? Because I'm just an elf, and apparently my whole life's work means nothing, if you can just come waltzing in here and call off the whole thing on a whim. One day! That's all you have to do is work one day, but no! I guess that's too much for you. No, I tell you what: keep the suit, keep the hat and keep your nasty livestock -- who should not be in here where we're eating, by the way -- keep 'em all, because I quit. I'm going back to the lodge, and you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to knock back about a dozen egg nog shooters, and then I'm going to build a hot tub. Any elfettes with no morals and low self-esteem are welcome to join me. Blinky out!"

The sleep deprivation is not only affecting my mood. During the feedings last night, I decided to take that time to do some praying. That's a good thing, right? I've been spending some time in Bible study every night before bed and so the next step is to add in some prayer time. Except, it didn't go quite the way I had planned. It started off normally enough. I prayed for family and friends, for wisdom in running our business, for those dealing with health problems and those generally going through a hard time in life. How nice.

Then I started getting weary and the real motives of my heart were revealed as my consciousness waned, and those motives were selfish at worst and just plain weird at best. It started with money -- it always starts with money. I prayed that God's will would be done in our finances -- and it just so happens that I know his will is for us to be butt-stinking rich. I told God that I knew the world would be a better place if we were rich. People would be healthier, wars would cease and everyone would have good taste in both personal and home fashions. The world would finally be perfect. Plus, as a bonus, I could buy whatever I want, and really, who doesn't want that for me?

Next, I prayed that God would reveal to Kelli the wisdom of polygamy. After all, the prohibition against it in the Bible applies only to deacons. Let's face it, I'm no deacon. Clearly life would be easier with two wives -- built-in babysitting whenever I needed to take one of the ladies out on a date, a good split of household duties and somebody they could complain about me too without even having to pick up the phone. So I prayed that God would impart this wisdom to Kelli. And I prayed that he would impart it to Jennifer Love Hewitt at the same time.

From there, things took a turn from just plain selfish to the absurdly selfish. I prayed that I would be abducted by aliens. This is an old one for me. We're not talking the missing time, you-never-buy-me-dinner-before-you-probe-me kind of abduction. In my version, wowed by my rapier wit and superior intellect, the aliens would use me as the subject of their most ambitious human sociology study to date. They would, using their painless alien technology, morph me into the perfect man -- muscle definition, perfect teeth, 20/15 vision, nine percent body fat and cheek bones so high that Sir Edmund Hillary would weep that he had never conquered them. Then they would place me back into society to see how my life would change based solely upon my appearance. After a year, when I had conquered the worlds of big business and high society; once I had more wealth than is imaginable and when J-Love had become my second wife, the aliens and I would hang out in the hot tub and laugh about the vanity of man. We might even invite some happening elves to join us.

Then Cooper grunted and strained, snapping me out of my absurd prayer-dream. Then I prayed a real, heart-felt prayer -- that this baby would go to sleep so I could do the same.

Category:

• Fustian
• Family