I could sleep with blackout curtains. I love a dark, cool room for slumber & I desire cold sheets & pillow. The husband likes to let in the light & only draws the heavy drape on our bedroom’s French doors part way. Our sleep habits are so apposed: I like to sleep with my feet very tucked in with perhaps a dog head resting on them; the Husband kicks the blankets off his feet during the night. I like the blanket up to me chest, with shoulders exposed. He sleeps with the covers up to his nose. I like to go to slumberland in corpse position- flat on my back with my hands folded at my mid-chest. He sleeps on his side, changing all night long. I sleep naked, always have. He sleeps in a tee shirt. I go to bed 1st. He stays up & watches old movies & sometimes starts sleeping there, in front of the TV. We make for odd bunk buddies.
I wasn’t surprised to find him asleep on the day bed in the room with the TV. I woke him & asked if he wanted to continue to sleep there, curled up with Junior. He came out of dreamland & explained that he was forced to sleep in another room because I “had been speaking in tongues” in my sleep, loudly & with urgency & an edge of panic. He also claimed that he would answer me in gibberish & I would respond. We supposedly had an entire conversation speaking in tongues. He couldn’t take it anymore & moved with the little terrier to another room. I was left to wonder if I had a special gift, & maybe we needed to record my nighttime ramblings.
The very next night, in a somewhat unusual turn of events, the husband came to be amorous, not his modus operandi in most cases, add in that we are coming up on our 31st anniversary, plus we are old, & I felt it was as odd as speaking in tongues while sleeping. I couldn’t get a feel for what hour it might be, & before we got to the point of no return, I felt that I should know the time because I have to get up at 4am to be at work at 5am.
I reached for the light on my alarm clock & heart went to my throat when I read that it was 5:18am! My staff arrives at 5:30am, & although it has happened to other managers in other parts of my company, I have never been late for work, & I have never left the staff stranded outside, waiting to start their work day. Like a bad trick in my youth, I shrieked- “I’m sorry. I am really late for work. I need to go right now! Finish yourself off! I’ll leave my phone number... call me sometime.” The Husband said- “Yeah, well thanks a bunch!”
I jumped up, put on my uniform, no shower, no shave, no socks, & into the automobile. I drove like a mad man. ¾ of the way to downtown Portland on I-5, I looked at the dashboard clock which read 3:40am. Some spirit in the night had changed my alarm clock! The song on the car radio was the Rolling Stone's Time Is On My Side. Was the universe playing with me? I decided to head into work anyway & accomplish some of the things on my considerable to-do list.
I started began my opening duties. I turned my computer on & it froze on “loading your personal settings”, which I swear was what the Husband whispered in my ear an hour earlier. I tried to re-boot, but the thing froze on the same dialogue box- “loading your personal settings. It was all very unsettling: speaking in tongues, clocks changing time, computers sending me cryptic messages. Was I entering The Twilight Zone, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen?
The next night I slept a lovely sleep, flat on my back like a corpse, with my dogs & the Husband with me in a cool dark room. My alarm went off at 4am, as it should, just as I was ending a dreamy dream of making out with James Franco.
No comments:
Post a Comment