Sleep, Who Needs it?

Whether we like it or not, sleep is one of life’s necessities, just like coffee, laughter, and a good support bra. Unfortunately years ago when we happily made the choice to spend the rest of our lives with our significant others, no one warned us that sleep would soon become a thing of the past or something we constantly wished for like whipped cream on top of everything we ate or an unlimited balance in our bank accounts. Now, after nearly twenty years of marriage, I realize that sharing my bed with a hairy male is not all it is cracked up to be. Apparently, I am not alone.

While chatting with a friend recently, she pulled me into a dark corner and whispered, “Bruno is snoring all night—and I mean all night.” She appeared to be at her wit’s end as she relayed to me everything she has tried—nose strips, mouth guards, and even taping tennis balls to the back of his pajamas to keep him from rolling over on his back. While I offered her a comforting squeeze on her arm, she stared off in the distance as if lost in thought. Quite frankly, the look on her face frightened me. She clenched her fists and muttered, “Just once I’d like to take that pillow and …”

I held up my hand to stop her. “No need to say anything that might be used against you in a court of law,” I joked. She wanted my help, but what could I do? For years, I’d also been suffering every night next to my own hot, hairy, restless male species. At last check, I figured it had been approximately nineteen years and three months since I had enjoyed eight hours of complete and total rest.

Every night when we turn out the light and fall asleep, my husband and I transform into synchronized swimmers, except without the grace, beauty, and nose plugs. He turns to his side; I turn to the other side. He flips on his back; I flip on my stomach. He throws his arm over his head; I hang my leg over the side of the bed. He flops across the bed horizontally; I flop vertically. And we perform our entire, complicated routine while lying on top of a 60” x 80” trampoline—also known as a queen-sized mattress.

By the morning, our bedcovers look like they have been mauled by two grizzly bears. Our pillows have landed somewhere on the opposite side of the room. I have one sock on and one sock off. The fitted sheet is missing and my husband is wearing the top sheet like a toga. He turns to look at me through glassy eyes and foolishly asks, “How did you sleep?”

I slowly turn to face him. “I was awake every six minutes, which if you must know, is how often you flail about the bed.”

He smiles as he unwrapped the top sheet from around his neck, “Honey, do you realize that sleeping next to you is like sleeping next to a 5,000 BTU heater? I’m simply trying to stay cool.”

As I creep along the carpet on all fours on a seemingly fruitless search for my missing sock, I mutter, “If only we had just one kid, then I’d have an extra bedroom where I could go sleep at night instead of in here where I am tossed around like a piece of driftwood in the ocean.”

As he finally untangles the top sheet from his left leg, he walks to the other side of the room, picks up his pillow off the floor, and grumbles, “Well, at least you don’t have to sleep next to the sun like I do.”

I stand up and stare at him. “Nice,” I reply as I reach over and pluck my sock out from behind his ear. Then, I look at him. I mean really look at him. He looks kind of cute standing there with his hair scrambled like an egg. Even though I am sleep-deprived and cranky, I still remember all the reasons why I married him. He winks at me. We smile at each other sheepishly.

I slip on my sock. We make the bed together. And we begin another day—sleepless—just like all the other married couples in the world who make the mistake of buying a house with too few bedrooms.

“Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.”
~Jessamyn West

By Vicky DeCoster (All Rights Reserved)

A Walking Cast, a Stripper Pole, and an Elephant Encounter

I don’t know what happened. At some point between midnight on a Monday and six o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday, one of my ankle tendons decided to let me know that it was the boss of my life, not me. As I hobbled out of bed and yelped in pain, I decided to do what everyone else does that has inadequate health insurance. I limped over to the computer, clicked on Google, and then typed “ankle injury.”

As I scrolled through page after page of symptoms and treatments, I ruled out one diagnosis after another. No, I hadn’t fallen. No, I hadn’t gone for a run on uneven ground. No, I hadn’t jump roped. Apparently, my injury was caused from doing absolutely nothing.

Six weeks later, I was still limping worse than Quasimodo. Reluctantly, I made an appointment with Dr. Orthopaedic. A few days later, I showed up in the office, obediently had my foot x-rayed, shuffled into the exam room, and waited. Before long, Dr. Orthopaedic entered the room, examined the x-ray, and then poked my foot.

“You have tendonitis,” he said. “That’ll be five thousand dollars, please.”

Moments later, I was fitted with a walking boot that resembled absolutely nothing beautiful or stylish whatsoever. I stood up. My left leg now weighed five pounds more than my right leg and I was sporting more Velcro than a baby in diapers or an obsessed crafter. As I clunked across the floor, I suddenly realized that for the next few weeks, I would not be able to sneak up on my children, my husband, or the postal carrier and scare the pants off of them by screaming, “BLLAAAAAAAH!” I glared at the boot that would now unfortunately be alerting anyone within a five-mile radius that I was coming. I might as well have a GPS device surgically inserted into my foot.

I tried to walk gracefully out of the doctor’s office, but quite frankly, now my knee hurt, my hip kept popping out of place, and I had to use my arms to balance myself like a tightrope walker. Worse yet, I hadn’t even had time to develop a good story to go with the boot before I encountered a lady in the parking lot who gasped and asked, “My goodness, what happened?” I really tried to think of something fascinating, but the old mind apparently went on vacation sometime between midnight on a Wednesday and six o’clock in the morning on a Thursday.

I smiled and replied, “Tendonitis.”

I won’t lie. She looked disappointed as she gave me one of those tight smiles that never reached her eyes. As I got into my car and drove away, I suddenly came up with one good story after another. I was skiing in Vermont when I unwittingly encountered a treacherous icy spot on the mountain. Instead of crashing into a group of innocent children, I veered to the left, somersaulted three times, and landed on my ankle.

Or better yet, while driving on an isolated stretch of highway, I came upon a small restaurant. Hungry, tired, and in need of a burst of energy, I walked in, thinking I would just enjoy a cup of coffee and a hot roast beef sandwich. Instead, I was greeted by a stripper pole, three burly construction workers, and a strong desire to prove I could still hang upside down, just as I did as a kid on the monkey bars at school. Turns out, I was wrong.

Decisions, decisions. On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store. As I staggered into the store and headed for the milk aisle, an older gentleman stopped and asked, “Oh my goodness, what did you do?”

I cheerfully answered, “Oh, I was on an African safari when I experienced a frightening encounter with an elephant. You should see the elephant.” I looked off in the distance as if I was remembering and shuddered.

He nodded and looked at me approvingly, “Nice story,” he said. “When I had bunion surgery a few years ago, I just told people that I had an accident with a chain saw, but I like your story a lot better.” He winked and walked away.

I think I might keep this cast on for a bit longer than the doctor ordered because it’s giving me a chance to use my creativity to its full extent, which is quite frankly, way more terrifying than the thought of me hanging upside down on a stripper pole after just ingesting a hot roast beef sandwich and three cups of coffee.

What’s in a Name?

It happened again this week. Another celebrity couple gave their baby a name that the rest of us would pass by in the baby book with a flick of the hand and a roll of the eyes. After I heard that Beyoncé and Jay-Z named their new baby daughter, Blue Ivy, I reevaluated all the reasons why I gifted my children with their names.

Every mother knows how important a name can be to a child. My own mother loves to tell the story of how my sister, who apparently could not correctly pronounce the letter “V” until she was 18 years old, used to reply “Gicky!” to anyone who asked, “What is your little sister’s name?” When pressed to reveal my real name, my sister would become angry and pronounce her words carefully (as if the other person was hearing-impaired), “I said, my sister’s name is GICKY!”

Before my son was born, I soon realized that choosing a name for him was going to be more difficult than I thought. “How about Matthew?” my husband suggested one evening as he poured over baby names in the book I had borrowed from a friend.

I shook my head and said, “Matthew reminds me of the kid who used to live across the street who picked his nose every day of the week except Sundays when he apparently decided to give his finger a day of rest.”

My husband perused the names further. He asked, “How about Michael?”

I shook my head again. “I had an old boyfriend named Michael. Remember, he’s the one who wanted to backpack in Europeand live off our love?”

“What about Max?” I grimaced. “I once knew a dog named Max. He liked my leg. A lot.”

“Daniel?” he asked.

I held up my hand. “Stop right there. Daniel was the high school crush who broke my heart when he asked that peppy cheerleader with perfect Farrah Fawcett hair to prom instead of me.”

After six months of discussion and three lengthy bouts of hysterical crying (by my husband), we finally came to an agreement with the help of a priest-in-training and a peace pipe. Together, we settled on a name we felt was strong, manly, and that didn’t remind me of anything horrifying from my past. I only wish it wouldn’t have taken me fourteen years to learn to yell, “Achaius, get in here right now or else!” without sounding like I was in the midst of a hearty sneeze.

Live and learn, we always say in our house. Parents are so much smarter the second time around. I think we definitely got it right when we named our daughter, Angyalka. I only wish it didn’t sound like I need the Heimlich maneuver when I call her for dinner.

All of us know that a name is only part of who our children are and what they will become after they grow up and move out of our houses (but only after we yell into the basement, “You’re 25. Get a job!”). So, just remember, whether your child’s name is Blue Ivy, Apple, or Moon Unit, it is up to you, the parents, to teach them to be a good, loving person who will one day say to their own children (appropriately named Smurf, Sunday, and Sunshine), “Payback is a bitch.”

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

–William Shakespeare

10 Outrageous Wishes for the New Year

As a new year begins, it is time once again to look back to the past, scream in horror, and quickly comprise a list of resolutions that we all hope will change our lives for the better. The good news is that six months after we pledge to all our friends, family, and the dog that this is the year we are going to change, only 46% of us will actually stay true to our resolutions. As a result, this year I have decided to shake things up a bit and shun traditional resolutions in favor of creating a list of things I’d like to do in 2012 along with the things I would NOT like to discover in the process:

1. I’d like to wake up once and NOT discover I am one day older.
2. I’d like to park at the mall and NOT come back to discover that the only distance-challenged driver within three thousand miles has left a generous two-inch gap between his car and mine.
3. I’d like to go to the gym and NOT gain weight from lifting weights.
4. I’d like to read one of those “Love Is” cartoons and NOT groan out loud or lose my lunch into my purse.
5. I’d like to do a cartwheel and NOT look like a three-year-old on her first day in tumbling class.
6. I’d like to try on my leather mini-skirt from twenty years ago and NOT realize I can’t get it past my kneecaps.
7. I’d like to bake cookies and NOT have them turn out like mini-Olympic discuses.
8. I’d like to wear a strapless dress and NOT suddenly realize I have nothing to hold it up other than a prayer and packing tape.
9. I’d like to climb something and NOT have it be my wall.
10. I’d like to organize my life and NOT discover that means I have to become more organized.

Call me Pollyanna, an eternal optimist, or just plain stupid, but I’d really like to think that 2012 is going to be the kind of year where I finally become as fit as Cindy Crawford, as rich as Oprah Winfrey, and as super duper smart as Stephen Hawking—and NOT without waking up and realizing it was all a dream.

That Truck Driver is Crazy!

In 1971, my husband was an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy when the ABC made-for-television movie, Duel, first aired. Based on a real-life experience, the first film Steven Spielberg ever directed terrified innocent television viewers right off their couches and straight into the arms of anyone who was not a trucker.

In Duel, Dennis Weaver plays a salesman who unfortunately has a chance encounter with a tanker truck and its angry, sadistic driver on a lonely stretch of road somewhere apparently between Los Angeles and hell. It made no difference to my husband that in the end of the movie Weaver runs the truck off the road, causing a major explosion that caused men everywhere to produce testosterone faster than their bodies could keep up. Duel forever changed the way my husband looks at the trucks who share the open road with him.

“Yep, it’s just us and the open road,” my husband cheerfully remarked as he merged onto the interstate recently. The sun had just risen, he had a cup of hot coffee in his hand, and life was good.

Just as I patted his hand and optimistically replied, “The open road is always full of exciting possibilities,” his disposition immediately changed as he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Duel,” he muttered as he hurriedly set his coffee in the holder and firmly placed his hands in the ten and two position on the steering wheel. I quickly looked over my shoulder. A semi-truck was barreling down on our SUV so quickly that I figured in six seconds or less, I was going to discover what it felt like to have an eighteen-wheeler inside my colon.

“I gave you the road, why don’t you just take it?” my husband yelled into the rearview mirror.

I glanced over my shoulder again. The truck moved into the passing lane and began creeping up next to our car. My husband looked in the side mirror. “Here he comes,” he shouted, “Brace yourself!” He gritted his teeth, gripped the steering wheel, and waited. The truck passed our car without incident.

My husband hissed between his teeth and mumbled, “Road bully.”

“Come on, honey,” I said as I handed him his coffee cup. “This is getting ridiculous. Really. It was just a movie. Truck drivers are not evil people.” I knew it was all just silly talk to my husband, but I had to try.

“Here comes another one,” he said as a semi-truck inched closer to the back of our SUV. “I just can’t break eighty and ninety miles an hour,” he added, “But he’ll never be able to beat me on the grade.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

I looked out the window for the grade. The last time I checked, we were in Nebraska. The only grades we had were K through 12. My husband began to sweat. The truck inched closer. I peered over my shoulder and quickly noticed I now had a pretty good view of the driver’s nose hairs. “Honey, I’m just warning you,” he warned, “This could go on for ninety minutes and I just can’t promise you there will be a happy ending.”

But before he could caution me again, the truck slipped into the left lane. “He’s in my blind spot!” my husband shouted, “This isn’t going to be good. Brace yourself!” A few seconds later, the truck inched past us, leaving my husband with nothing but unwarranted fear and a cold cup of coffee.

“That truck driver was endangering my life,” he remarked as he slowly released his death grip on the steering wheel.

“I know, honey, I know,” I replied as I patted his hand. Just like he said earlier, it was just us and the open road. Oh yes, and apparently several hundred deranged, crazy truck drivers who are clearly after us—at least in his impressionable thirteen-year-old mind.

I’ve learned one thing from this experience. The sign of a good movie is when the plot still terrifies you after forty years. Just ask my husband—but not while he’s driving on the interstate. He’s much too busy trying to save our lives to answer questions.

By Vicky DeCoster – All Rights Reserved

A Fear of Heights Creates a Few Ho, Ho, Hos

It was a mere few seconds after we buried the turkey carcass in the backyard next to two dead rats, three hermit crabs, and a finch and licked the last bit of whipping cream from our dessert plates that my husband turned the same shade of white as the tablecloth, knelt next to the dining room table, and began praying fervently, “Please dear God, I beg of you. Don’t let my wife ask me to hang the outside Christmas lights again this year. I promise to give you my soul right now, right here, if you can somehow work your magic so I don’t have to climb that ladder again this year.”

It’s no secret in our family that my husband has an overwhelming fear of heights. His fear is nondiscriminatory and includes anything that causes him to be more than two inches above the ground (including standing on his tiptoes). Last summer while we were vacationing in Wyoming, he accidentally looked over the side of the one-foot by one-foot wide mountain road we were stupid enough to travel on and noticed the sixty-five foot drop that awaited us if he happened to close his eyes to sneeze and missed one tiny hairpin curve.

“We’re all going to die!” he screamed while clutching the steering wheel. “I have to turn the car around right now before we all plunge to our deaths!” he shouted in a slightly hysterical tone while attempting one of the “Y” turns he practiced just once in the driver’s education course he enrolled in approximately forty years earlier. We moved forward half an inch. He quickly threw the car in reverse and backed up approximately one centimeter. Forward. And back. Forward. And back again. I tried not to think of the cliff that loomed in the background, just waiting for one minor miscalculation in our much unrehearsed “Y” turn.

Meanwhile, I was forced to once again transform myself into the therapist I was never trained or licensed in any state to be. “You’re okay,” I murmured in what I like to call my 1-900 voice, “We’re almost turned around now. You’re doing great. Stop holding your breath, you’re starting to look like a Smurf.” Nearly thirty minutes later, we were finally headed exactly where my husband prefers to be—down—which brings me right back to where we were just a few days ago.

I pulled my husband up off the floor and grasped him firmly by the arms. “I know you can hang these lights,” I said confidently as I opened the box of Christmas decorations and began the arduous process of untangling the lights. “Yes, I can hang these lights just like you can get over your fear of public speaking,” he muttered. “Remember the last time you spoke in public? To this day, I don’t think that kindergarten class understood why you muttered, ‘I’d rather die than talk in front of this many people,’ just before you started demonstrating how to make pancakes.” He sighed and trudged outside to prop the ladder against the house. Somehow we had made it through this process for the last two years, but after our experience in Wyoming, his fear seemed to have exploded into something neither he nor I, his very inexperienced therapist, could handle. As I met him outside with the first strand in hand, he muttered, “I don’t know why we have to do this every year. Christmas lights are stupid.”

He took a deep breath as I, once again, murmured, “Just take the ladder one rung at a time. Don’t look down. Look up. It’ll be over before you know it.” Suddenly, I realized that was the wrong thing to say.

“You’re right, it will be over in a matter of seconds,” he replied as he shakily climbed up to the second rung of the ladder. “Right after I plunge to the ground in a heap of flesh and bones!” He climbed up to the third rung and stopped. He wrapped his arms and legs around the ladder and shrieked, “I can’t do it!” And that’s when I knew I had to take action.

After I coaxed him down the ladder with a leftover piece of pumpkin pie, I headed to the local discount store. There had to be something—or someone—that could help us. A few minutes later, I stood in the holiday aisle, overjoyed and riddled with excitement. As I pulled the package off the shelf, I realized I had just found my Christmas miracle. I raced home to show him my treasure.

As I pulled in the driveway, he was putting the ladder away in the garage. He looked defeated. I thrust the package in his arms. “Looks like your soul is saved for another day,” I said as I watched him read the package directions. Suddenly, he smiled. His face slowly turned a healthy shade of pink.

“This is the answer to my prayers,” he said as placed one of the included hooks on the pole, affixed the string of lights to the hook, and slowly snapped the hook on the gutter. “I never have to get on the ladder again!” he yelled to anyone who cared.

Suddenly, the angels sang and everything seemed brighter in our world (mostly after he turned on the Christmas lights). Turns out in the end, together we had found a way to not face his fear, but instead run away from it like two scared elves in desperate need of a lot of psychotherapy.

The way I look at it, next year we only have one way to go—and that is up.

Top Ten Things I am Thankful for This Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time for cooking for 12 hours, eating 9,734 calories in 10 minutes, plopping ourselves on the couch in a carbohydrate-induced coma, and giving thanks for all the bountiful gifts in life. Oh, believe you me, I’m the first one to admit that I’m thankful for all the obvious gifts like family; rainbows; kindness of strangers; friends; the sun, moon, and stars; and the sale on boxed wine at the supermarket. But I’m also thankful for the many not-so-obvious gifts. Therefore, I’ve compiled my list of the top ten things I am eternally grateful for this Thanksgiving:

1. The treadmill because it is much healthier for me to hate something that makes me healthy than it is for me to hate living breathing creatures like people and cats.
2. My cell phone calculator because it saves me from trying to mentally compute the following story problem while shopping: If the original price of a scarf is $15.95 and the sale price is $12.35, how much is 20% off 40% of the lowest price plus a $10 mail-in rebate minus the store discount for cash only purchases?
3. My middle-aged sisters for making the smart decision not to retire all the way to my knees but instead to hover over my muffin top until their Social Security checks start coming.
4. Basketball season because it signals the end of my football widowhood every year and reminds me that yes, I do indeed have a husband.
5. Another year without my doctor saying, “Starve yourself for a day, take these pills, drink two gallons of this thick goopy stuff, and then let me know how many rolls of toilet paper you go through before I see you for that colonoscopy in the morning.”
6. Spanx or any cheap facsimile thereof because anything that makes me look like I have a 24-inch waist when I really have a 42-inch waist is a miracle for which I will be forever grateful.
7. My memory because at least for now, it appears I won’t be yelling, “WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?” to my husband when he comes home from work every night.
8. Bad television commercials because it gives me a reason to get up off the couch and go to the kitchen for a snack.
9. Reading glasses because without them I would have to pay for the expensive arm extension surgery that health insurance companies refuse to cover.
10. My God-given talent to exaggerate because without that skill, I would never be able to compose my annual holiday letter.

In November 1621, the colonists and the Indians sat at a big table and gave thanks for a bountiful corn crop and the fact that none of the colonists had thrown anyone overboard while traveling on a small ship across the ocean for 66 days. Now some 390 years later, we carry on their tradition of celebrating the fact no matter our obstacles over the past year, we can always find something to be thankful for—even if it is for elastic-waisted pants.

By Vicky DeCoster – All Rights Reserved