Alarm Clock

I had a bit of a head cold this week, but nothing like what my husband John had, with a runny nose and congestion despite the Sudafed. As faithful readers of this blog are aware, John has been known to snore from time to time, but when he's congested his snoring is louder and more persistent than usual. Which means I spent part of each night this week sleeping downstairs on the couch.

Yesterday morning I woke up about the time my alarm clock usually goes off. I was tired and grumpy and didn't want to get up, but I wanted to get upstairs and turn off my alarm clock before it woke John.

When I got to the top of the stairs, I noticed the bedroom door was closed, with Thomas kitty on the outside. Thus, I knew Thomas had woken up John, who had then kicked the cat out of the bedroom. So I opened the door, expecting John to be at least half awake, but there he was, passed out and snoring contentedly.

I hurried over to my alarm clock to turn it off, but found it was silently proclaiming the time to be seven minutes after the alarm was supposed to have gone off. I double-checked it, and all seemed to be in order. I couldn't figure out why it hadn't gone off, but I wasn't about to wake John to find out. Sick folks need their sleep, after all.

Last night after I got home from work, I asked John, "Did my alarm clock go off this morning?"

"Yes!" he replied accusingly, "and it took me forever to figure out how to turn off the darned thing!"

I looked at him a moment, then prompted, "So, why didn't you come wake me up?"

"What?" he said, in his best sickness-induced hoarse and confused voice.

"If my alarm went off, why didn't you come wake me up? You know, that's what the alarm is for."

"Oh," he said, "uh, I meant to. I thought about waking you up. But by the time I figured out how to shut it off...I don't know what happened..."

I suppose I should have been mad, but normally he's so smart, and he's just too cute when he's all sick and fuzzy and confused.

I think maybe I need to get an alarm clock for downstairs.