Spellcheck thinks "otherside" is two words, but I don't care.

Hey kids…you know what today is? You bet you do. It’s Haiku Thursday, officially the most popular day on the ENTIRE INTERNET! At least in public middle schools in Whyoming anyway. And, yup, that misspelling is completely intentional.

The last winner of Haiku Thursday is Old Dude Thick Glasses. Otherwise known as my dad. He wins for going the extra mile and completing a multi-stanza’ed entry, as well as really getting out of his comfort zone, since he usually prefers a much more sophisticated type of poetry. Specifically, the limerick.

So, congratulations ODTG. Your prize shall be school pictures of your grandsons.

This week’s haiku topic will be: sleeping. And that is because while I was sleeping very early this morning, dreaming of, I’m not kidding, sleeping, I was awakened by Evil Paperguy, who likes to park his Cutlass under our open window, crank his rockin' Best of Yanni CD, and then walk up and down the block tossin’ papers at steps. After he casually walked our block at his leisure and then drove away, his muffler rattling gently into the predawn fog, I attempted to regain my cozy space in slumber…and this poem came to me. Really. Right then. I was counting syllables in bed. Which is way more interesting than sheep, by the by.

Okay, here goes:

Warm bed calls to me
Otherside of pillow cools
Wearily I sink.

NOW. Here’s what’s weird. The otherside of the pillow was, in fact, NOT COOL. It was creepily uncool, as in...body temperature. Apparently, before the harbinger of Yanni appeared, I was either sleeping with an arm under the pillow, or, and this is the creepy part, some type of coolness-sucking creature lives in there sucking the very coolness from the otherside of my pillow. Which really freaks you out when you’re half asleep. Dreaming of sleep. And Yanni. And Haiku. The shock of a warm otherside of my pillow, combined with all those other external factors woke me up to the point where I realized I ought to just forget it and get up.

Anyway – your challenge is to write me a haiku about sleeping and add it to the comments. Forbidden words: peaceful, Yanni.

Ready, set, count syllables. And no, Old Dude, I do not know how many syllables are in “zzzzzzz.”