The baby woke me up at five a.m. this morning. Nothing too pressing. She was either lonely, hungry or suddenly stricken with a sense of dread borne out of what she considered poor handling of complex international matters by the last five presidential administrations which means that her generation will be saddled with a horrible responsibility that she didn’t feel it would be ready to handle.

I went and picked her up and handed her to her mother, who proceeded to provide the sweet nectar of life. Or something. They dozed of in content, sated slumber until the alarm went off.

For me, it was too late. Somewhere in the last few weeks the seeds of a bout with insomnia has been laid. Which is particularly biting because after the baby was born, my insomnia went out the door.

It’s not that I’m physically incapable of sleep in these instances. My brain simply won’t allow it. Imagine if you injected a gallon of coffee straight into your brain. That’s how this felt. My mind went from one connection to another at the blinding speed of light.

There’s a crack in the ceiling. What if that crack opens up and swallows us and takes to the depths of Hell? What if Hell is actually a place here on Earth, like Detroit under a methane cloud? Can gastrointestinal gas kill you? Did they name it gas because of the word gastro? Or did they call it gastro because of gas? Will the price of gas keep rising? Look the sun is coming up. What generation of my relatives will be on Earth when the sun goes super nova? Would they know that the end of the world was coming? What would happen to civilization if we knew that the world would end at a certain point? Would we devolve into anarchy? Or would we become a group of hedonists? Speaking of hedonism, why is Mick Jagger being knighted? What did he do? I never like the Stones that much. Sure, they wrote some good music but are they truly classics? In the beginning they were pretty much a white boy blues band. Lennon and McCartney were much better. Macca’s getting married today. To a one-legged-activist-model. Why can’t I be something hyphenated? Maybe I should take on a cause. What would my cause be? Americans for the Reduction of Pamela Lee? Concerned Citizens for the Destruction of Creed? I don’t have a cause. Maybe I should get a cause. Maybe I should worry about social issues like violence or drug abuse. Yeah, I could work with crack addicts. Look. There’s a crack on the ceiling. What if that crack opens . . .

And on and on. The alarm would go off and I’d hit snooze. I’d hit it with a certain vitriol that one (who doesn’t HAVE to get up at any particular time) would feel when they (who always falls asleep later) has been designated the snooze guy.

My wife finally went off to take a shower and I was left alone with the baby. She was sleeping like a . . . . well . . . baby. I was wide awake.

I suppose I could have gotten up. It was useless sitting there. But, the baby was all snuggly and cute. Why ruin it?

Ten minutes before I was supposed to get up I was sound asleep. My wife woke me up and I think I either a) asked her if I could sleep for another five minutes or b) told her that if she valued her life she would go back downstairs and not consider waking me up again.

Considering how I usually am in the morning (grumpy) I’m betting that I wasn’t polite in the least. My wife is a saint. She genially accepts that I’m not a morning person. She also accepts that I’m grumpy on Tuesdays, the third Wednesday of any month with an R in it, during Republican administrations, after drinking cheap coffee, near any state with less than three right angles, 1000 feet or more above sea level and when listening to the local “Modern” rock station. I should do more to show my appreciation. Maybe she’d like a nice ham.

Ten minutes later my wife came in to get the sweet, cuddly, snoring baby to get her ready for the sitter. She started stroking the baby’s hair (more like fuzz, but it smells good) and the little monster stirred. And reared up in a growl like a lion who had just been poked in the rectum with a flaming, pointed stick. She grunted, rolled angrily and moaned as if being picked up to have her diaper changed in the morning was a capital crime.

Poor baby didn’t want to wake up. I could see the look in her eyes that said, “Woman, when I can walk, talk and have more refined motor skills if you ever wake me again there will be hell to pay.”

She’s daddy’s little girl.