When the hub’s away, Mrs. Mullet will...freak out in the shower

When I was in college, my mother had a dinner party. I had gone home for the weekend and was in bed early with a fever (don’t you love when college kids bring their foreign germs home and infect the household?). Around 11 p.m. I walked into the living room, sat on my mother’s friend’s lap and tried to pull the curtain off the rod so I could use it as a blanket.

According to mother, I turned to Mrs. Mattie (the woman whose lap I’d chosen) and said, “There’s a tick in my bed.”

And so begins the sleepwalking phase of Mrs. Mullet's life.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the fever; I think it’s genetic. My dad used to move furniture in his sleep. I’ve never rearranged the living room, but I have walked dorm and apartment hallways and for some reason, I have always tried to sit on my roommates while they’re sleeping and tell them about insects and/or animals in my bed and/or room.

They loved me.

The idea of sleepwalking seems funny, but it actually sucks to wake up and not know where the hell you are or what you're doing. It also sucks to have someone say, “Do you know what you did last night?"

If I’m going to do something remarkable in my bed, I’d like to remember it.

Anyway. Last night.

I awoke as I was about to climb into the shower. The light was off. I was holding a can of Diet Coke. It was 3:45.

Over breakfast, I stupidly opened my mouth and told my mother (she spent the night since Chuck's—still—away). All day, she called me at work. Why now? Why Diet Coke? Why when she's here? (Gee, I don't know, could the stress of working full-time, watching a bipolar toddler and having my mother at my house for the last few days somehow spur my subconscious into overdrive? Could it be?)

Nah.

I actually think it's this:



It's one of those Top 1o tricks to frizz-free hair thingamabobs and it says to pour dark beer over your head.

Except we don't have any. (Doesn't that seem unnecessarily cruel, given my current circumstances?) All month I've been thinking I'm going to pour the damn beer over my head once and for all and blog about it and share my findings with the world!

In its own special way, my darling subconscious must have tried to cross off one of the items on my to-do list.

Aww.

Now, sadly, instead of insider frizz information, all I can offer is an unsexy sleepwalking shower story involving Diet Coke and a comatose mother. Yah, sorry about that. Tomorrow I'll, you know, make up a shower story involving musk-scented bath gel and three 25-year-old gymnasts, ok? Oh, and dark beer.

This is my fourth and last installment of "When the hub’s away, Mrs. Mullet will..." series, which will chronicle my adventures while my good-for-nothing husband frolics in the woods all week.