Grunting

At certain times someone makes a comment which catches you off guard. My wife made such a comment to me a couple weeks ago, on or about March 10, 2022. As we got into bed that night she asked me if I knew I grunted in my sleep.  It just so happens that early that morning I recall grunting as I was moving in the bed, not long before I got up, so I responded, that I recall that I had grunted right before waking up. Well it turns out it, apparently it is more than just that one night.

At the time of the question we had been married 11,458 days, and so it took her 11,457 days to make her comment. I know that in the past I may snore slightly and she gives me shove to shut me up. She hears everything, even when she is asleep. We had a neighbor who used to, until start of COVID, manage a bar/restaurant in Columbus and he would arrive home at after 2:00 am with music playing loudly on his car radio. Perhaps that would drown out part of my grunting. 

There have been a few times that she has asked my girlfriend, Alexa, to play some sleep music. I am not sure why, but a lot of sleep music seems to involve rain or moving water like water falls. Water sounds can be disruptive to sleep. She does not have a 64 year old prostate gland so the water sounds suit her just fine.

Land Girl is a light sleeper, if she is able to get any sleep at all, and therein is the problem. If she wakes up at 1:30 am and does not get back to sleep every little noise will be disruptive. So, my likely very  slight grunt in moving in bed probably is well noticed. Wouldn't it be nice if the neighbor had his old job back and loud car radio to sound out my grunts? What I am trying to figure out is that she likes the start of daylight savings time, because instead of it being light before 6:00 am (sunrise when it occurs in Madison is about 6:17 am, so daylight starts appearing about a half hour earlier) the sun rises later in the morning so it it is dark when we roll out of bed at about 6:30 am. If she is not sleeping anyway, does this give her extra time in bed to just lay there hoping to get back to sleep?  

From "Wisconsin State Journal" March 2022

This may be the first time that she commented on my grunt noise during sleep, but she used to complain about what she termed my pancake flips. She said I had the habit of lifting myself off of the bed flipping around in mid-air and then falling back down on the mattress. This would occur from say stomach to back or back to stomach. Probably age has stopped me from doing this. I think she probably did not care for the bed shaking as I landed my gymnastic tumble on the mattress. She has yet to let me know if I ever scored a 10 on one of my pancake flips. Knowing Land Girl, I would score a negative ten on the flips.

Of course, I am not sure she moves at all in bed. She starts sleeping on her back and in the morning that is how she is once again--laying on her back. I think she lays in the same position all night long, I am surprised she does not get bed sores. While I think I mostly sleep on my side, the pancake flips would show that was not necessarily the case. I used to touch her in the middle of the night to make sure she was still alive, but that ended because she complained about me disturbing her sleep. Every now and then she has a slight snore, or noise she makes which is really disruptive because she is usually as silent as a titmouse. Sunday morning I heard her breath a little bit. So, I guess, she makes noise too.

As it turns out I must not be the only person who grunts in their sleep. The morning following her comment, there was a cartoon in the daily paper which delt with this subject.  What my wife generally calls a Godincidence. Because it is just too coincidental. The comic has a woman telling her friend, while out for drinks in a bar, that her husband is away on a business trip, but that she found a device that you can select a sound which best mimics the missing husband, "so it sounds like he is right there with me."

As of this writing, my sounds, while disruptive have not yet forced me go to sleep in another bed. If that were to happen, she would probably not get any sleep because for many years she has been used to me being the background noise. Just like the woman in the comic strip. I think she will need the background noise I make just so as to disrupt her from the critters she hears on the roof of the house. If she were to look at it from that angle the grunting noise is not all bad.