As a kid I always used to love musical chairs. Running around like a lunatic until the music stops before fighting my way through the odd little brat to take my place, whilst Mummy and Daddy look on and turn a blind eye to any wrong doing in the hope they don’t have to deal with it. Kind of similar to most offices really!
We had yet another desk move today which must be my 30th seat at least in the last 2 years. You run around all day and as soon as you manage to be at your desk for 5 minutes to warm the chair, you’re moving again. I don’t mind it actually, nice to look at a different wall! However that said not only am I now sitting opposite my boss which she is immensely delighted about as you can imagine, but I am also in whispering distance to my bosses boss and will now actually have to behave. I’m not sure I can do that. It is good for my introverted mojo as it is quiet, but I have to admit I am a bit concerned about moving closer to the door and being strategically positioned near important people. I should have gone on Big Brother for some pre-move training. Perhaps this is tactical on their part; a P45 would have sufficed though!
Now having moved I am in direct firing line of germs that come from children and are passed through their parents and onto anyone suitable enough to suffer the bug. Having been woken up numerous times in the middle of the night over the last week in a panic to shift my heaving cat off the bed before some scene from the exorcist erupts, my boss came in today with a similar experience. But hers was of the human form, which in my view is far worse. She came in having nursed her pukey child and then her pukey self after a night of dettol and floor scrubbing (she assured me it wasn’t morning sickness in her case though she couldn’t be too sure of that either which is worrying – if you have a girl can you name her after me… Princess?!!).
Anyway what pukey children or animals have highlighted is that men really can sleep through anything. Whilst there are sick sounds, movement, light, scrubbing, running up and down the stairs going on, they still manage to offer no or limited support. In the odd event of my husband miraculously waking up to a huge cat brawl at the end of our bed or me deliberately being loud to wake him up and help, he tends to be useless. Women can wake up and in an instant function pretty much as normal and kick into awake mode. My husband, however, wakes into some kind of weird almost drunken state and I get absolutely no sense out of him at all (less than normal anyway). Like when we go to bed and we’ll be talking and in a 2 minute silence he will fall asleep. I put the TV on and an hour later he wakes up, not fully realising he has been asleep for ages and pretends to be awake by laughing at something on the TV that truly isn’t funny, or is at a really inappropriate moment. Then he will spend the next 5 minutes trying to hold a conversation with me realising he has been idiot, but still trying to persuade me that he was awake the whole time!
I remember when we had just started living together about 7 years ago. He was in his final year of Uni and I had just started work. He must have been under some stress or something, but in the middle of the night I woke up because he got out of bed. I watched him stand against the wall for about a minute rubbing his hands all over it. I thought it was funny at first (if a little odd) and then wondered what the hell he was doing.
“What are you doing Mart”
“Looking for the light switch”
I told him that there was no light switch on the wall he was being friendly with.
“Where are you going then”
“To the toilet” he said (a bit of frustration and why the hell are you asking me this question tone came into his voice).
I left it for a few minutes and the next thing I know he was fighting with the front door to go outside. I asked him again and at this point getting quite concerned about his mental state of mind and he said he was looking for the toilet again (real frustration in his voice now). At this point I thought I had best go and help him out. I was quite thankful he was not on the ball enough to work out how to unlock the outside door, otherwise there’s no knowing where he may have ended up. I took him into the bathroom, put the light on, smacked him about a bit and showed him the toilet. He seemed to get it. When he had finished he came straight back into bed again, said “hello” (which was an odd thing to say given what just happened) and then fell asleep.
It was all incredibly bizarre. I mean he was obviously sleep-walking but he has never done it since. He does manage to have full conversations with me in the small hours of the morning when I am still trying to get to sleep, but will have no recollection of it at all. I think this could be an early sign of dementia; perhaps I should start monitoring this?
The other thing that used to happen with my husband in his final year of Uni and into his first job, was that every 4-5 weeks without fail for a good year or more, he would be sick. It was just for 3 days at a time. The same thing would happen, he would have a bit of a sore throat in the lead up, get a little headache and then throw up and by the end of the 3rd day he would be fine again. As it happened so frequently I started to take note in my diary of when he was ill so as I could predict the next time and plan our social life around it. Now this was weird, it was like the male period from a different end! Coming into the 2nd year of having this thing he got really moody, played up a lot and then it suddenly stopped. Menopause kicked in and whatever it was has not come back. What this does go to show is that I am married to an absolute nutter and possibly a medical freak. I hope he is still fertile?!!
