Marital bliss

I woke up at 01:30 to find sara snoring like a rusty Roto-tiller. I tried the usual tricks to get her to stop—a light touch on the nose, a brush on the forehead, a gentle nudge. None of them worked, so I tried the usual last-ditch measure, and gently pushed her head until it had rolled into a new position.

After a minute or so of blissful silence, the noise began again, louder than before. I tried an elbow in the ribs. No reaction.

I was puzzled, and now fully awake. I tried speaking to her. I tried lifting her up as if to roll her over. No reaction at all. I concluded that she’d taken some kind of incredibly powerful sleeping pill… either that or she’d pricked her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel. She’d been lying awake worrying about her acute case of Alice when I’d come to bed, so I was guessing the former. She was out for the count, in fact if it hadn’t been for the noise I’d have worried that she had dropped dead.

I tried head-to-the-left. I tried head-to-the-right. I tried head-looking-straight-up. I tried with and without the pillow. Nothing helped. I considered trying to roll her over, but I was slightly worried that in her insensible state she might choke to death on a faceful of pillow or something. I couldn’t remember whether Sudden Infant Death Syndrome meant you were supposed to put them on their backs or their fronts. Moving her out of earshot was also not really an option, so finally I was forced to admit defeat.

Which is why I slept on the couch last night. Luckily it’s a futon designed to double as a bed, so I got a reasonable amount of sleep. I nearly took the duvet with me, but decided that would just be petty, so I slept under the Polarfleece throw blanket instead. Around 05:30 I woke enough to notice that the noise from the bedroom had stopped, and returned to bed.

I feel like sleeping on the couch has been a kind of marital rite-of-passage, albeit without the usual broken crockery and yelling.