It's Mike. He is not going to like this one bit.

I'm not a low-maintenance sleeper. I have a variety of really adorable sleep quirks that my husband just could not be happier about. It's sort of takes the same amount of time to get ready for bed each night as it does to get ready for work each day. Except longer at night. Getting ready for bed involves several trips to the bathroom, ear plugs, 5 pillows, my own sheets and blankets, curtains and blankets to block out every conceivable speck of light, Special Prescription Strength Lotion (thanks for all the dry skin, daddy!), temperature requirements... it's a special time.

I'm not proud of it. I don't want to be one of those fussy people with a 42 Point Perfect Sleep Environment Checklist. But there you have it. I am one of those people. Luckily Mike is great about it. Plus he's not the one who has to wake up at 6:48 every morning. Although technically he is, since he always fixes my breakfast and packs my lunch for me and starts my car when it's cold. Basically he's a saint, and I'm making his life impossibly hard. But he gets to go back to bed when I leave. So it evens out. Anyway the point is, I get pretty angry if I ever have to get out of bed in the middle of the night, because it was so much work to go to sleep in the first place, and I hate to have it all undone just because I drank a 40 oz. diet coke a couple hours ago. So I've managed to master waking up just enough to make it to the bathroom and back. It's not a good time for, say, logical thought.

Well last night I woke up in the middle of the night because Mike was growling or mumbling something in his sleep. And I saw this creepy greenish light appear on his side of the room. I figured maybe he had been using his laptop before he went to sleep and just forgotten to close it or something. So I got up to go to the bathroom (where I have to keep my eyes shut, lest the seemingly constant brightness coming in the window wake me up to such a degree that falling back asleep is hopeless), and when I came back out I went to turn off his laptop. Only there WAS no laptop. So in my winning state of mental clarity and alertness, I started freaking out thinking I was dealing with some sort of ghost situation. Great. I'm going to die, and my pajamas don't even match, and I have no idea how to fight or defend myself, and Mike is going to sleep through the whole thing. (Which reminds me of another time I was half-awake and convinced I was going to die. We were in Mexico in this fancy 4-star hotel and early one morning I heard, like, seriously 300 gun shots. They went on forever and I just knew Mexican killers were running rampant through the hotel killing every American they saw. Lord was I panicked. I seriously thought it was going to be the end of me. And my dang roommate never even woke up! Hours later, somebody on the bus was like "Man, did you guys hear all those fireworks this morning?" Ha ha. Fireworks? It is funny you should say that, you know I thought I heard something. I just figured it was imminent death at the hands of ruthless killers in a foreign country.)

Well it turns out the green light was just the dang smoke detector. Low battery! ::blink:: Get up, people! ::blink:: I am going to die! ::blink:: What if there's a fire? ::blink:: Get me more batteries!

At least this time I didn't have to lay in my death bed panicked and sweaty for hours before I figured it out. And it didn't even take that long to go back to sleep. Where I dreamed that I was cheating on Mike. With my best friend from elementary school. Who is a girl. And her mom was like "Now, we're open about this. But I know your Granny would never go for gay marriage. Is there anybody else in your family we have to worry about?" Um, yes, just one other person.