Tales of the Married...

First off, I’d like to say, that I have what is probably the most amazing husband in the whole world (maybe I’m a little biased?). And every day seems to be a new adventure and hold some new “quirk” that I usually find quite comical.

One of the first things I found out upon living together is that Steve has a very complex methodology for waking up in the morning. He sets a total of 3 alarms. 2 on his phone, one on an alarm clock strategically placed at the opposite end of the room. They all go off at different times. The first one, I call the “If I get up now, I can take my time getting ready, watch some TV and eat breakfast”. The second one would be the “I have plenty of time to get ready, and can eat breakfast if I inhale it on my way out the door”. The third one (the one across the room), of course is the “I need to go now, I’ll be lucky if I have enough time to get my pants buckled before I get out the door” alarm. As with 95% of the rest of the population—he never actually gets up until the last one goes off.

This sometimes results in a lot of confusion for me, and sometimes black eyes for Steve. One morning, after his first alarm went off, I apparently fell back asleep and dreamt that he had already left for work. After hearing his alarm #2 going off, I shot straight up (perhaps a flashback from deployment days), and began to reach across the bed in the direction of the ringing phone. Except Steve hadn’t left for work and was still in bed next to me, causing my over excited reach to end with my elbow in his cheek. I have always been the type of person who hears the alarm and has it shut off before it can beep twice, because I can’t stand the sound of blaring noises right away in the morning. So I have gone from listing to half a beep for an alarm, to having to listen to 3 go off every morning for about 5 minutes each—I usually kick him by the third one so he will get up and shut it off. I usually fall back asleep in no time though, since I never get up until 7:30.

Now, to change gears a little, when Steve gets home, he usually has a little bit more work to do on his computer, so he messes around with that while I make supper, and then while we are eating supper, I will attempt to have a conversation with him. Since our “kitchen table” is better known as our “coffee table”, the TV is generally on and as with most men when the TV is on, he is completely zoned out. I could strip naked and to streaking right in front of him out the front door and around the block and in the back door and he would have no idea that I even left. (I just asked him if this was a valid statement, to which he replied “it depends what’s on”). So, all hope for a conversation is pretty much lost.

That being said:

This morning, the plumber was scheduled to come to fix our backed up sewer. I had called my grandma yesterday to see if she could stop at our house and lock it up since Steve and I would both be at work—Steve in Alex, and me in Starbuck. Steve contemplated just staying home, and starting work late so he could be here in case they needed anything, and lock up himself. So, this morning, his alarm(s) went of at 5, 5:15, and 5:30 (the normal times), and he laid in bed contemplating whether to go to work at the normal time, or start late and stay with the plumber. He had asked me what he should do the night before, and I told him it was completely up to him.

Now, this isn’t the first time that this has happened, but all of a sudden, at 5:30am, he wants to hold a conversation with me. This morning it happened to be about the “stay or go” dilemma, but usually it is about other things. While I appreciate the fact the he wants to be conversational, I have yet to figure out why 5:30am, when I’m trying to sleep, is the magical time of the day that makes him all chatty.

After I silenced the conversation by responding with “it doesn’t matter to me what you do, it’s a decision you have to make yourself”, I thought for sure I was on my way back to dreamland. Here is how the next ¹/₂ -1 hour went:

Steve gets out of bed.

Steve turns on REALLY BRIGHT hallway light.

Kayla rolls over, turns back to said light.

Steve gets back in bed and snuggles up to Kayla.

Steve gets out of bed.

Steve gets dressed in his work clothes.

Steve leaves room for about 5 minutes.

Steve comes back, lays on top of covers.

Steve gets up.

Steve takes off dirty pants/shirt.

Steve crawls back in bed.

Steve snuggles up to Kayla and damn near pushes her off the other side of the bed.

Kayla gets ZERO sleep after methodic alarm schedule that started at 5:00am.

Needless to say, Steve decided to take a late start and stay at the house and wait for the plumber. Despite the fact that I was crabby all day—due to a bad day at work, and 2¹/₂ fewer hours of sleep, I couldn’t be crabby at him. I came home to the basement floor wet, but cleaned up after the sewer created quite a mess, and the “tracks” on the kitchen floor from going back and forth also cleaned up. I love him!