Bedfellows

I'm one of those annoying people who has to have total darkness before she can fall asleep. (To be fair, it's probably only annoying if you've ever lived with me -- so, sorry, Mom and husband.) Even the glow of the indicator light on boy's baby monitor seems blindingly bright to me, and I have to make sure that the light isn't shining in my general direction. Either that, or I have to have an obstacle -- like a pillow -- in between me and the tiny green dot of light that seems to shine straight into my brain, keeping me awake.

Anyway.

Because I'm sensitive to light, I was opposed to having a television in our master bedroom, but eventually I wore down. It's turned out to be largely a non-issue, since husband, 99 times out of 100, is asleep long before I turn in, so there's rarely occasion for me to gripe about the flickering light in the room if it's on. But instead of the glare getting on my nerves, it's turned out to be the remote control.

See, my husband is blessed with the ability to fall asleep faster than anyone I know. It's great for HIM. It means that whether we're on vacation (and therefore in a strange place) or not, whether we're in a rainstorm or not, whether it's an afternoon nap or an early bedtime or a crash at the end of a long day, he's out within two deep breaths. The drawback for me, of course, is that if there's anything I want to chit-chat about at the end of the day, I have to make sure I catch him while the lights are on and he's not yet horizontal, because otherwise I may find that I've been talking to myself for 15 minutes about the last episode of "Lost" I just got around to watching. 

(On three or four different occasions, he's even fallen asleep WHILE TALKING TO ME. Granted, each time, he was really tired anyway, but it was disconcerting because he shifted gears right from normal conversation into dream-speak instantaneously. I was all, "What do you think about repainting the library?" and he was all, "I think it's a good idea, because the guys were driving the truck, and the meeting was moved anyway, so Trent told me he'd take us out to lunch. Grandma?" Wha?! There's a lot wrong with that sentence or two, but that last part really gets me. Not only am I not his grandma, she's been dead for like eight years.)

Ok, FOCUSING. Sorry, Internets.

So husband winds down by watching a little SportsCenter or MSNBC most nights. While I'm surfing or reading, he'll flick the channels a bit, and then in one sudden move, he's switched off the TV, spun onto his side to face the window, covered his head with one hand or a pillow, and mumbled "g'night." And none of that would bother me if the remote control made it over to his bedside table. But no -- it never does. Instead, it just gets dropped wherever it was when he hit the "off" button, as if he'd turned off not only the TV but his own active brain waves and motor control, and I never learn my lesson and fish it out of the blankets at that moment. Nope. I wait till about 3 a.m., and I've just climbed quietly back into bed after nursing the baby, and as I flick the blankets back to slip into the warmth and ease back into la-la-land, the remote goes flying and hits the chest of drawers across the room with a clatter, scaring the tar out of me. Either that, or it tumbles out of the blankets in the near-darkness, and for a split second I think it's a large rodent, and I try to scream but I can't get out any noise past the object lodged in my vocal cords, the object being my own heart, which has leaped in panic and tried to skitter into the bathroom by itself to crawl up onto the counter and point at the rat and shriek. 

Yeah. I really hate that remote being in bed in the night. The only technology I can deal with at 3 a.m. is my iPhone, and that's because it's sleek and sweet and tells me the time when I can't see even as far as the night stand without my contacts. In fact, I'm pretty sure it ends up in bed through the night at least half as often as the remote does.

Hmmm. Maybe I should quit my complaining before husband reads this post and starts to get ideas about banning remotes AND iPHONES from bed. 

Because that would just be crazy-unreasonable.