Alarming Issues in the Bedroom

I’ve had some problems with my wife in bed.

It started when she would never get out of it. At least not without repeatedly smacking the snooze button like she was tenderizing a cheap cut of beef or quieting a protester at a Trump rally.

This habit stemmed from My Love’s practice of setting her clock 30 minutes ahead of the actual time. She theorized that when the alarm went off at 5 a.m. EST (Exceptionally Stupid-early Time), her bleary eyes would see it’s digital red face flashing “5:30” and trick her brain into thinking:

• I’ve had an extra half-hour’s sleep. I’m well rested!
• Better get up now or else I'll be late for work!
• With so little time before I have to leave, I won't have to clean those pans I “left to soak” in the sink overnight!

Sounds like solid graduate-school psychology. Unfortunately, my spouse has a master’s in international finance. So when My Love's slumber would be pierced by BEEP-BEEP-BEEP, her mind would start crunching the numbers:

“GROAN! I set that [adjective] clock half-hour ahead, didn't I? It’s only [very colorful adjective] five in the [64-pack of Crayolas with the built-in sharper adjective] morning. WHAM!! Take that, [noun more colorful than a 1970s Elton John costume]!”

Her beating the clock would repeat every nine minutes for an hour until she would actually be late and, yet again, escape her marital obligation to clean those soaking pans from the dinner I had cooked the night before.

Those days are pretty much gone, and we’re both thankful – especially me because the joy of a writer’s life is rarely money or fame, it is sleeping in past seven most days. Maybe the solution had to do with a change in her circadian rhythms. Maybe it was the more comfy pillow-top mattress we bought. Possibly it was my randomly changing the time on her alarm clock every day for a month.

I may not have taken psychology in college, but I did take a class in biology. When you have no idea whether you are late, early or right on schedule when you wake, you tend to freak out and panic adrenaline is the triple espresso of hormones.

But times are still rough in the Uncool boudoir. The latest problem comes from the voices in my head. They screech in courtesy of our shower radio.

Shortly after we moved into our home, I made two alterations to our master bathroom. I added a massage head extension and a radio to the shower. This caused my wife some concern as she feared the next addition would be a mini-fridge. Still not a bad idea.

Despite her mocking (and, oh, there was mocking), she has come around on the shower radio. Overnight news reports. Morning zoos. “Hold me closer, tiny dancer!” All reverberating around the tile, granite and glass, through the walls and into my eardrums. At 5 in the morning.

As with our snooze alarm situation, we had a conversation about the issue because communication is the bedrock of a solid marriage. When that fails, there’s always subterfuge.

One night before slipping of to sleep, I yanked a batteries out of the radio and hid it where she would never look at that wee hour of a weekday morning – in the pocket of my pajama pants. I figured she would just assume the batteries had run down and, given the lack of dawn’s early light, leave the radio to sit silently like so many pans that really didn’t need 10 hours of soaking because the chef in these parts is very judicious with his use of non-stick cooking spray. But apparently hell hath no fury like a woman in need of traffic and weather on the eights. Somehow in early morn’s drowse and darkness, she found new Duracells. I really should check our smoke detectors.

Despite this, I think my problem has been solved because after she reads all this, I’ll be sleeping with dog on the downstairs couch. Hold me closer, large retriever.

-- A version of this was first ignored by the readers of The Stamford Advocate.