Random Tuesday Thoughts: Snoring and Other Delights*

If you like Random Thoughts Tuesday, take a look at Keely, the Un Mom. Go ahead, it won't kill you. It's way better than reading my crap. And she invented it, to boot.

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*This technically qualifies as random because it was completely unplanned and spontaneous, and so NOT what I was going to write about. And this is my blog, so there.

With humble apologies to 孫武,

The Art of Snore, by me.

Chapter One - Lying Down

You must lie down.

Chapter Two - Waging Sleep

You must take up the challenge to fall asleep quickly, 

before consciousness overtakes you and rouses you.

Chapter Three - Sleep by Stratagem

The source of strength in sleep is the dream. You must use your REM and activate the 

dream state quickly and efficiently.

Chapter Four - Tactical Positioning

Recognize your ideal position for the sleep state and do not let your enemy, 

consciousness, move you from it. Be still.

Chapters Four Through Ten - No One Ever Reads These

Blah-blah-blah-blah. 

Chapter Eleven - The Terrain

You must use terrain to your advantage. Pillow-Top Mattress will provide you 

with advantageous terrain.

Chapter Twelve - Avoid Incendiary Attacks

Thai, Indian, Mexican, and Korean are out. 

Chapter Thirteen - The Use of Spies

Lets face it. There's no good analogy for this one. 

So, where was I, anyhow? Or is it anyway? Who cares? Oh, yes....The Art of Snore...

I snore. A lot, apparently. I don't know, because I'm often asleep when it happens. Let me explain.

Some time ago, Lady Marshmallow suggested I mention the fact that I snore to my family doctor, the next time I went to see him, just as a side note, and because she was going to tell him if I didn't. Since we live in a smallish town, and the likelihood of her running into him and blabbing about this was fairly high, I caved in. At a recent checkup, I casually mentioned that I might, just a teeeeeeensy bit, have a sort of, slight, tonal quality to my somnolent inspirational episodes. 

Well, either Lady M had already bumped into Dr. Overcautiouspanicattheslightestthing, or he was simply being true to his name, because the next thing I know, I'm partaking in what is ironically called a Sleep Study. I say ironic, because the takeaway lesson I learned from it is that you neverfuckingsleep have some difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep while you're in a sleep study. 

The good doctor was trying to ascertain whether or not I suffered from - yet another irony, since because I am sleeping when I snore, I don't suffer from or hear a damn thing except my dream Playmate asking me if I want more ice for my drink - Sleep Apnea. How nice of him to be concerned! 

Apparently, sleep apnea can be dangerous and is responsible for, in highly technical medical jargon, bad things that happen to your body. What my doctor failed to take into account was that for over forty years, I had already done bad things to my body, and that for me, snoring and/or taking a short break from breathing is a virtual vacation for me.

I will spare you the details of the process of a sleep study, because frankly, it's boring as hell, and it involves placing wires all over my body. Oh, and that guy, Desmond Norris, who wrote The Naked Ape, is wrong. I have hair in all those places, and the brutes at the Sleep Lab use industrial-strength adhesive! 

Cutting to the chase. After a night of whatever the opposite of bliss is, it was determined that a) I do not have sleep apnea, and 2) I can, while snoring, create a partial vacuum in a room. 

So after all was completed, and I returned home, nothing really has changed except that I now know that Lady M will be throwing more elbows and doing more of those cute little under-blanket kicks that she likes to do. And I will know the reason, in advance, should I wake to her holding a pillow over my face while laughing maniacally.