Things that go middle in the bump of the night

Let's play "Jeopardy!"

Answer: getting up in the middle of the night with a newborn, while exhilirating on the "I'm bonding with my new son" level, sucks.  He's evolved; Desmond normally wakes up once between midnight and eight now.  I, on the other hand, seem to be up all the time.  It's an event when I manage to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time.

Question: Why the hell am I writing at 3 AM?

Correct.  Select again.

I'll take "different types of spit-up" for $400...

Anyway, I'm up again.  It's kind of peaceful in the "I might be the last person on Earth" way, and I've had this habit most of my life.  My last two years in college I worked three nights a week from midnight to six in the lobby of one of three dorms.  All I had to do was sit there and make sure nothing bad happened.  It was on the less-exciting side of the Iowa River, so very little happened, though I did punch a pizza delivery guy once.  And I ran down a hallway at 4 AM with a flaming bag of popcorn (though not at the same time as I punched the pizza dude).  It was essentially eighteen hours of mostly uninterrupted study time and I was getting paid for it.  I rarely had to do any work outside of those three shifts.  The only drawback was trying to sit through a class on three hours sleep.  I took a lot of naps in secluded regions of the library back then.

(Think of that last paragraph as the answer.  The question:  "What is a random, pull-it-out-of-your-behind memory from college that you haven't thought about in at least ten years?")

There has been a lot of snow here lately.  I think we passed fifty inches for the season today, after a little less than a foot fell here.  When I first came downstairs an hour or so ago after giving up on sleep again, I walked into the dark kitchen that looks out to the backyard.  I love how the darkness of the middle of the night is brightened by a newfallen snow.  It's one of the few things I enjoy about winter.

So I stood looking outside for a while.  It was completely silent except for the hum of the fridge ten feet behind me.  Very peaceful; I was glad that I was awake.  Then, for no reason that I can think of, it hit me like a slap: today is February 7th, my father's 74th birthday, the six he has celebrated up in Heaven.

I've written about this day before, and I think I've made my point about it, so I think I am done writing anything else in regards to this day.  I will say that I have been thinking about my father a lot lately, obviously because I just became a dad, and I am comforted by my memories.  Once a day, I tell Desmond something about his grandfather.  By the time he is ten he might know as much about him as I do.

There is a specific direction that I want to go with this, but I will have to resume at a later time.  Someone is hungry again, and it ain't me.

I mean this with all sincerity: being a Dad rocks.