What passes for Domestic Bliss

Many years ago I had a dog who liked to sit on the sofa when I was out, even though he was not allowed to do so. When he'd hear my car he'd pop down onto the floor and as I came in the door he'd get up from the floor, stretching nonchalantly as if he'd just now used his legs after hours of holding still. The sofa cushions were still warm from his body and covered in golden retriever hair.

My family very much needs to move our morning wake up time back by an hour or more, for a variety of reasons, for the naps for the baby in the morning at day care, or for me to get to work on time so I could leave earlier and begin dinner before Lord Honey brings in the kids, etc. For a lot of reasons this would be a great move, but has been difficult to achieve.

My parents are possibly the most rigid people on earth. They truly do not vary their bed times and waking hours at all. Daylight Savings Time is the greatest upheaval in their lives. To try to accommodate the change, they change all the clocks on the upper level of their house by 15 minutes every two days and go to bed and wake by that schedule, until the change is complete. I decided to employ this strategy and set both clocks in our bedroom to an earlier wakeup time, maybe by fifteen minutes per week until I achieved my goals.

Night before last I was changing the two alarm clocks in our bedroom to go off fifteen minutes earlier than we have had set for ages. As I bent over to reach Lord Honey's clock, on his side of the bed, my leg went up behind me in a stretchy sort of arabesque pose. It felt great so I left it there a minute, then switched legs and held that pose. Lord Honey walked in and saw me. Now, he may be married to me, may have had to check my c-section staples not once but twice, and probably as the man who shares my bed he knows better than anyone what my physical flaws and general mass really are, but I still don't like him seeing me stretch in such an odd and probably unflattering way. I dropped my leg immediately and said nothing about the clock change, just explaining that I was stretching.

The next morning, after his customary three pushes of the snooze button Lord Honey finally dragged his skinny white ass out of bed, and after a cup of coffee accused me of acting like Jarvis, my long dead couch sleeping stretch faking dog. "What?" I spluttered. He cocked his Spockian eyebrow at me and slowly stretched his leg behind him in a purposeful arabesque. "You didn't say anything about changing the alarm time, dearie."

Now, If he wants me to have a laugh, he stands nearby and stretches his leg out behind himself nonchalantly.

And this is is how it is that we stay married, for better or for worse.