Morning of the living dead

The alarm whistles at me at 4:30 every morning and I swear it's Salma Hayek singing to me. That's until Wife slaps me in the melon. That's her loving way of telling me to "turn off the alarm, you horse's ass."

I gave up the snooze alarm about two years ago. It delivered a false sense of extra sleep. Hitting the snooze alarm is like dating the high school tease, you think you're going get your old man's station wagon - which you begged to borrow just for this occasion - a-rockin' only to have the tease put her hands on your shoulders and say, "let's just be friends." The alarm clock on snooze let's you kiss her on the neck but smacks your hands away when they go for the ta-tas. Plus, it killed those wonderful pre-alarm dreams. Stopping and starting dreams of me being the ham in a Hayek and Kidman sandwich just wasn't filling. You need a good hour or two of REM sleep to really flush out the meaning of such visions. Just as the three of us stepped into a steamy bubble bath, the alarm would beep for the first time - SNOOZE - and there are Hayek, Kidman and me, no longer settling in for a bubble bath, but this time stepping into a vat of tapioca pudding wearing nothing but Moo-Moos depicting the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz roasting Toto and Dorothy at stakes. SNOOZE AGAIN - and gone are my two beauties, and instead I'm laying on a bed of rose petals with Fred Sanford and Uncle Jesse (Denver Pyle, not that cheap knock off Willie Nelson) who are fanning me with palm fronds while wearing togas and crowns of braided fig leaves.

My head's a sea of '70s and '80s TV at 4:30 in the a.m. I'm just glad the dogs don't come over to lick my face, I'm afraid my mind would interpret that as Uncle Jesse sucking on my toes.

Nowadays, Wife presses her ice blocks for hands against my back and it's enough of a reminder to get my butt out of bed and get ready for a day at the prison work camp. I'm a zombie, only instead of terrozing frightened villagers with outstretched arms and barritone moans I stumble around the bedroom scratching my ass and moaning.

Wife, on the other hand, springs out of bed like she's just downd a can of Jolt cola and popped a half-dozen No-Doz. She buzzes around the bedroom like a butterfly hopped up on extra-strength caffeine pills. She talks a mile a minute as if she's in a word marathon for the day and wants to get out to an early lead.

And that's how it was this morning. I celebrated Jesus's return to his posse Sunday by swigging down a trough of regular coffee laced with what must have been combined with some scientific expirament strength caffeine which left me awake until midnight. Too make my night even longer, the only movie on TV was that stellar piece of cow poop, "Six Days, Seven Nights." I thought about guzzling abottle of vodka figuring a half dozen shots or more would knock me out for the night, but I was afraid I'd find Anne Heche sexy after the fourth shot and that was something I couldn't stomach. So, in a post sleep haze that has me looking at the world through eyelid slits opened wide enough to allow just a sliver of light through, Wife kicks off her morning verbalness with a machine-gun like onslaught.

"Whatwouldyoulikefordinner? Steaksoundsgood. IthinkI'llmarinateitalldayinthat (she finally takes a breathe before exhaling the last part of her sentence) teriyakimixture. Whatdoyouthink, honey?"

"Unh."

She picks up that my mental window shades aren't exactly raised for dawn's early light, so she speaks a little slower.

"I dreamt about squirrels blocking the wind with a giant bed sheet. What do you think it means, sweetheart?"

"Unh."

I climb into the shower, which typically becomes a 15-minute nap standing up, and Wife continues gabbing.

In a perfect world, I'd say a few minutes later my verbal switch gets flipped on. But this is my realm, and sometimes that switch takes hours to click on.

"Good morning ... how was your weekend?" Asks head boob No. 2 as I stumble into the prison work farm at 5:30 a.m.

"Unh."

"Did you finish copy editting reporter No. 3s story?" Asks co-copy editting monkey just before deadline at 10 a.m..

"Unh."

"Do you want a steak tonight, dear?" Asks Wife as she saunters into the house after her day in cushy office land.

"Unh."

Maybe, while everyone and everything around me is evolving, I'm actually de-evolving. Slowly sliding back to my ancestors' (the cavemen, and not those whiny pansies in the Geico commercials, but the Quest for Fire honchos who tackle gazelle and slice their neck with sharpened granite hunks) form of communication - grunts.

I could be on to something, though. Wife just asked about some sweet lovin' and my reply:

"Unh."

***

And now, for those of you wondering about the answers to this week's Sleazy Teasy, here ya go:

Alan Crawford ... Cumbria ... Pony
Cliffy Rowlands ... Essex ... Guitar
Jennifer Feather ... Cornwall ... Computer
Liz Northey ... Yorkshire ... Painting Set
Sarah Jamison ... Kent ... Bicycle

One commenter - way to go Carrie - got it right, so I'd call this an overwhelming success (I set my expectations pretty low to guard against failure ... I'm crafty that way). Friday will see another Sleazy Teasy.