It’s 8 a.m. on a rainy morn and here I am at Kmart, looking for some sort of earplugs to silence my husband’s snoring.
Needless to say, I am bereft of sleep and in no mood to linger behind the couple in front of me as the clerk rings up their purchases: Pop Tarts and bean dip for her, Doritos, bean dip and a Coke for him.
Can a finer breakfast be had?
That evening, I install my internet-touted earplugs into each ear. They are waxy and sticky. Instructions are to roll each plug into a ball, place plug over ear opening and flatten to form an airtight seal.
There is also a warning not to insert plug into ear canal. Not desirous of visiting the emergency room later that evening, I do as instructed.
Though my head now feels as if it’s been plunged into a barrel, the plugs do work, affording me a good night’s sleep. My husband, I am sure, is also grateful not to be poked, prodded and screeched at during the night.
There is only on problem upon my awakening: The earplugs are now stuck to whatever strands of hair have flopped over my ears during the night. Unlike rapidly ripping a Band-Aid from one’s flesh, removing said earplugs from one’s tender tendrils requires a slower, more methodical approach.
Such are the travails just to get a decent night’s sleep.
Unlike my husband, who could sleep through a mariachi serenade, I come from a long line of light sleepers. My mother once made my father go out into the backyard in the middle of the night in order to dispatch a cricket that was keeping her awake.
Alas, there was also no sneaking past her if I came in too late after a date. Years later, she paid me back with the time-honored Mother’s Curse when my own children stayed out, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. Not until I heard the sound of my son’s old pickup rounding the corner could I drift off to sleep.
Years ago, during our camping days at Apache Lake, it was rowdy partygoers who used to keep me awake. One time, another woman and I were trying to sleep outside between our two RVs, forced there by our husbands’ snoring.
Meanwhile, the revelry from a nearby campsite grew ever more boisterous. We hollered at them to quiet down, to no avail. Then we realized that one of our vehicles directly faced the partygoers.
We turned on the headlights, revealing various human forms scattering to avoid the glare.
“Turn off your lights,” they hollered.
“Turn down your music,” we hollered back.
That one we won — except of course for the symphonic snoring still emanating from inside our RVs.
A couple of years later, we invested in an overhead swamp box powered by our RV battery, which drowned out all noise originating both from the campground and from my husband’s snoring.
We no longer own that RV nor its swamp box. Still, I might take a page from what my daughter-in-law does. She travels with a “white noise” machine that soothes her children to sleep.
While it won’t be needed to lull my husband to sleep, it might be just the ticket for me — without having to pull gook from my hair every morning.
