SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

Why is it that my wife can sneeze, scratch, stretch, turn, cough, take all the covers and most of the bed, turn the TV on and eat crackers in bed but one sound from me and I’m treated as though I’m a foreign enemy? She’s the one who made the damn stuffed cabbage, after all, then put so much on my plate that passing the gas created by her wonderful concoctions from the kitchen became inevitable.

It has recently been discovered that my wife is responsible for nearly 25% of all global warming, at least in the Great Lakes area. When she makes chicken soup we have to turn the furnace down to 50 degrees and open up several windows and doors. Our neighbors heating bills go down as well every time she cooks, which is often, though they don’t complain.

I’m expected to lie absolutely still and perfectly quiet in the same position for 8 solid hours while she maneuvers her way around her 90% of our King-size bed stirring around so often that when we first got married I in fact thought she was performing an elaborate exercise or some new kind of aerobics routine over there. Since we have a waterbed I can easily keep track of all her travels as they eventually ripple over to my extremely small portion of the sleeping surface.

One little sound or the tiniest movement from me and she responds as if to an earthquake of the gravest magnitude, an 8 or 9 on the Richter Scale, when I was merely re-adjusting the position of my little finger. Her entire night’s rest has been ruined and we can forget about her returning to sleep; even when, as usual, she does fall back to into a deep sleep, almost immediately. The next morning, however, all I hear about is how she “didn’t sleep at all last night” thanks to my ……… (fill in the blank here).

Separate beds or separate rooms are as likely to happen as us getting separate houses. Lately I’ve taken to slipping a bit of whiskey into her late night drink, it appears to help. It works even better when I also partake, so, and I’m on solid ground here, have a little night-cap before you go to bed. Good whiskey is the elixir of the Gods. I’m beginning to realize why and it is for a good cause…

Dan Mc