I think the best thing about being a man is the ability to sleep. No matter what is going on, the stresses in life or worries at work, crying babies or the neighbour’s lawn mower, men can sleep through anything. Men nap without guilt. They even have sports like football as an excuse to doze.
I am jealous. Sleep does not come easily and once interrupted, it never returns. The Carpenter has an automatic shut off (particularly if I am talking). It happens right about the time I get my second wind. Then he gets up in the morning right about the time when I finally settle to sleep.
Case in point: Monday morning. 4:30am. An alarm sounds in our bedroom (which is still set in the dining room for those of you keeping track of the home renovation wars). It is one of those bleating beep, beep, beep sounds that emanates from the deceptively small alarm clock radio. The alarm escalates ever louder for each beep when it knows it is being ignored. The Carpenter sleeps on, oblivious to his own wake-up call.
I bolt up. I look around my bedroom (dining room) and make sure that I have, in fact, woken in the same chaotic surroundings that I fell asleep in. The growling, snarfling sounds of my sleeping spouse beside me heave and wane with every breath.
Finally, with a delicate yet subtle elbow to the ribs, the Carpenter awakens to my silent request to turn off the alarm. He rolls over, walks to the blue flashing light and gives it one hard tap on the head.
He hit snooze. He never hits snooze. This is a man who leaves in the dark and comes home in the dark. Snooze is not an option. But sure enough, he heads back to bed, rolls over and falls into the rhythm of his noisy sleep as if nothing happened. Hmph.
Before I can stop it, my brain has hit the ground running with a random slide show of paranoid thoughts that range from “Is he sick? Is he quitting his job?” to the typical, “What should I wear to work today?” or, “Do I have enough milk for cereal?” Or, “Better make that hair appointment, that deadline, call the dentist, book the tickets, pay the cable bill.” Yep, that’s how I roll. Mommy adrenaline right on cue. My worries are so boring my rambling brain lulls me back to something resembling sleep.
And then it happens: the alarm hits its crescendo again. I am thrust into another state of alerted annoyance. Not the Carpenter. He sleeps on. Two nudges and one fairly nasty push later, he incoherently obliges my request to get up, only to hit snooze again and flop back into bed, instantly asleep again. Not fair.
Suddenly, from somewhere downstairs a new alarm goes off. It sounds like the radar alerts of a submarine: ping, ping, ping. It is the Carpenter’s mobile phone warning him to seriously get up right now or else. And if that weren’t quite enough, the radio alarm clock chimes in to announce the last snooze period has ended. My house sounds like a war zone.
The Carpenter gets up and gets on with his day as if nothing about this is unusual. He doesn’t even look back to realize he is getting the death-ray stare from beneath our duvet. No wonder I love my Carpenter, I want to be him. Then maybe I could get some sleep.