Somnambulist

The other night, Matt and I were sitting around trying to relax, and Matt heard someone walking around upstairs. He went up to check, and found Penny in our room. She'd turned the light on, and was on the bed taking her pyjama bottoms off as if she was getting ready for her bedtime shot.

"What are you doing?" Matt asked.

Penny glared at him.

"Why are your pants off?"

She glared again.

"Come on, put your pants back on and get to bed," he said.

"They're not!" she hissed.

"Yes, they are," Matt said. He made her pull her pants back on. Blood sugar lows (and excessive highs) can make her growly and slightly irrational, so he did a check: 140, perfectly within limits. Just a normal bad mood, for no apparent reason. "Time to go back to bed. Do you want to walk, or do you want me to carry you?"

She glared at him again. "You," she snapped sullenly.

He picked her up, and while he walked to her room, she commenced digging her chin painfully into his shoulder and collarbone. He dropped her on her bed. "Go to sleep," he commanded.

Fifteen minutes later, we heard movement again. Matt went upstairs to check on her. She was in the bathroom, going potty. "Hi, Daddy!" she chirped, sleepily cheerful and sweet.

"You feeling okay, punkin?" She nodded. "Don't forget to flush and turn the light out, okay?"

"Okay!" Not so much as a rolled eye for the reminder.

Back downstairs, we pondered her turnaround, until Matt said, "I wonder if she was sleepwalking."

My mother sleepwalks occasionally. She'll get out of bed, wander around the house, get a drink of water, and usually wake up when she goes through the living room and sees the clock on the DVD player. One morning, she woke up at o-dark-thirty sitting out on the porch and working on the crossword puzzle she hadn't finished the previous day.

My brother used to rock back and forth in his sleep. When he was a kid, he literally shook three beds to pieces. That habit followed him to college, and he didn't stop until he moved in with a girlfriend who would elbow him whenever he started it up.

I talk in my sleep, or at least I used to. When I was in middle school, I freaked out Jennie B. during a sleepover by talking about the house being on fire; and in college I annoyed the hell out of KT by waking her up at 5:30 or 6 with a long discussion about whether I was going to go to my morning class and whether I should break up with my boyfriend. In both cases, when they asked me about it in the morning, I had no idea what they were talking about. (Matt says he hasn't noticed me doing it, though occasionally it will happen that he'll refer to a conversation we've had that I have no memory of at all, and it will occur to me if I was asleep.)

And Matt says his brother used to sleepwalk (sleepwalked? sleptwalked?) when he was a little kid, too.

So there's some precedence for Penny being a sleepwalker.

Awesome.