There are days that I come home from work utterly exhausted. On most of these occasions, luck is on my side. Tyler tends to take his afternoon nap shortly after I arrive home. Carpe momento, no? I use those moments of opportunity to quickly fall to unconsciousness on the floor, couch, bed, or any semi-horizontal surface.

I’ve never been much of a napping person. I view it as time that could have been better spent doing something more productive than the absolute nothingness of sleep. More times than not, I wake up from the nap so groggy and disconnected from reality that I don’t even know what day it is. Unfortunately, five hours of mostly restless sleep per night eventually catches up with me, and occasional naps become a survival necessity.

So, what to do when napping isn’t an option? The simple answer is “don’t fall asleep.” The simple answer never sufficed in Algebra I, II, and III^[1], and it doesn’t really work here without a more thorough explantion. Or, you could just trust me on this one, and save yourself the hassle of reading about my misfortunes. No? I didn’t really think so.

On Tuesdays, Sarah drives to Michigan. She has a weekly study group with some friends to prepare then for their PTA liscense exams. On a dinner plate by itself, this isn’t a problem, as I can still nap while Tyler does. But when the salad bowl is slathered with Tyler-doesn’t-want-to-take-an-afternoon-nap dressing, the dessert tray of Joe’s Heaping Helping of Nap deliciousness is taken away.

So, back to the question I posed earlier: what do you do when napping isn’t an option, but you are dead tired? Let’s say you drove five hours to Cedar Pointe (or insert any other theme park within a long driving distance). You spend the entire day walking around, standing in lines, and consuming enough calories to feed a small village, for a week. At the end of the day, you are mentally and physically drained, but the person that agreed to drive home says they’re too tired, so you decide to drive home even though you were the one to drive that very morning. You’re driving down a boring, straight, sparsely lit highway, and your eyes feel heavier than they ever have before. Cranking the radio, rolling down the window, and sticking your head out just is not working. What do you do? Don’t pause to think about it, because you’ll try to give me a rational solution that nobody ever really puts into practice. Instead, let me just tell you what you do. After making sure that all the other passengers are sleeping (even the one that promised to stay awake and talk to you), and that the road ahead is both straight and devoid of other traffic, you solidly grab the steering wheel in both hands and hold it as straight and steady as possible. Then you tell yourself that you’re going to close your eyes for just a couple seconds. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

At home with Tyler, I was lying on the floor, and we were playing with his farm toys. I put my head down and told myself that I would just close my eyes for a couple seconds…

A lot can happen in ten minutes.

My brain vaguely processed Tyler lightly patting and rubbing my head. It was comforting for two reasons. First, I love having my head rubbed. It is very relaxing for me. More importantly though, I knew that Tyler was right next to me and wasn’t getting into trouble.

Then it occurred to me that things just didn’t feel right. I really couldn’t tell you what it was that made me open my eyes, but something about the situation set off an alarm in my head. When my eyes located the hands that were hitting me and rubbing my hair, I saw that each hand had a handful of a brown substance. I don’t know if any of the sounds that came out of my mouth as I jumped up were actual words or simply choked screams. What I do know is that a wall prevented me from skittering any further away from the son that I purport to love.

I know what those of you who claim to be my friends and loved ones are hoping. No, it was not poo. You evil folks will just have to be satisfied with the knowledge that I really, truly believed it was poo. It was dirt. Sarah has a tray that contains a number of dirt pods, each about the size of a roll of film. You use these pods to start seeds indoors before transferring a plant outside. We weren’t sure if the jalapeno plants in the garden were going to make it^[2], so Sarah started a few seeds in the dirt pods. These dirt pods are the perfect size for a one year old toddler’s hands. Through whatever passes as a thought process in his big little head, Tyler – my little half-me – decided that smearing dirt in daddy’s hair would be nothing but fun. And by God, he was having fun until the mean ol’ daddy-monster woke up.

Do not fall asleep in the presence of a toddler. Ever. EVER.

[1] I always received point deductions and a red inked message that said “show your work” on my algebra exams. Explaining that I was a math genius and there was no work to show did little to appease my instructors. In the end, I was forced to put a bunch of scribbles under each problem to give the effect that I was really working hard to solve the equation.

[2]The jalapenos in the garden are thriving. There are more than what we know to do with. Our first year of gardening was a very pleasantly surprising success.