The other night was one of those nights – where your mind slithers all over the place with eyes wide open staring, because every little sound is a disaster in the making. On and on it went until I finally caught on to what I was doing.
Maybe if I listen to my breath, I thought – I might calm down and slip into snoozedom.
But that didn’t work. As soon as I started paying attention to my breath, I couldn’t get it right. Too fast. Too slow. Not deep enough. Christ, who ever thought breathing could be so hard? Then I heard Man-Wonder give a little snort followed by deep slow breathing. Ahhhh! I’ll sync my breath to his.
And there we were, pleasantly breathing together in a nice sweet rhythm; all night horrors banished . . . until I realized we weren’t breathing!
My hand shot under his tee-shirt and settled just below his ribcage. No movement. Maybe I wasn’t feeling in the right spot so I moved my hand closer to the center of his chest. Suddenly he gasped; took a deep breath, then smoothed out. My heart climbed back out of my throat. Thank God, he was still alive!
That’s when I almost shot up with surprise – did I just discover the reason for his chronic tiredness? His middle of the night crossword marathons?
I was on a mission – my hand returned to the spot below his ribcage and each time I didn’t feel a breath I nudged him gently. He was going to keep sleeping even if it killed me.
Or that was the plan but eventually I fell asleep somewhere in between nudges.
The next morning while eating breakfast I said, “I think I got a number on your sleep issues.”
“Oh, really?” He looked over at me, one eyebrow doing its thing. “And . . . “
“You stop breathing a lot during the night.”
“Is that why you kept poking me?”
“I was nudging, not poking.” Then it hit me, “How do you know I was nudging you?”
“Because I was awake. First you start feeling me up. Then you start poking at me. How could anyone sleep through those antics? And if I wasn’t breathing – it’s just because I was steeling myself for the next poke. It was really annoying you know.”
And that is why I am always amazed that any marriage ever lasts . . .
anne54 Said:
on May 14, 2019 at 3:43 pm
Oh yes!!
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writeknit Said:
on May 14, 2019 at 3:29 pm
LOL too funny!
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