Snore-a-pod and other unlikely things
April 10, 2013
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
–The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
I’m absolutely prepared to swear that I’m not the one who snores. [Admission: I used to sleepwalk, sleeptalk and sleep fought back against nightmarish intruders that have turned out to be … PiC. Oops. In my defense … well ok, he didn’t even notice so do I need a defense?]
PiC and I have put a lot of money into a fantastic new mattress, bigger and better than ever!, and really need to replace our pillows. But every so often PiC wonders if we should have gone our separate ways for sleeping since his snoring keeps me up or wakes me so many times in the night.
Katie recently asked this same question about Separate Bedrooms.
The thing is, except for those nights when a literal earthquake couldn’t wake me for the exhaustion, my body’s become attuned to having him around and startles awake if he’s not there. This probably stems from those many nights when he’d have one or another thing to do before bed and would end up falling asleep where he sat. Around 2 or 4 am, something would trigger in my brain and I’d get up to fetch him. Can’t win for losing!
It’s like Mind-Reading (but worse)
While cooking the other day, I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of the dog food container we’d just gotten to prevent any bug infestations. Not a problem now and not a problem ever, we hope.
Unhappily, the touted stackable container that should hold greater than 40 lbs appears to have all it can do to hold about 25. Other than that, though, we quite like the container. Until I heard PiC’s cursing: “why can’t I close t— oh. Never mind ….. ”
“Because you were turning it the wrong way?”
“YES. How did you know?”
simultaneously: You/I just did that!
*burst out laughing*
Learning to make the best of things
Talking to my dad about trying to start to plan a wedding reception has uncovered a whole pot of simmering tensions. He’s holding firm on some pretty unreasonable expectations, in my opinion, and basing it on fairly illogical logic. *sigh* It’s hard to say how we’re going to navigate to the other side on this but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around how, frankly, selfish he’s being about this.
I’ve willingly sacrificed pretty much everything I wanted in the past ten years for them. And now when it comes to the wedding, instead of working together to figure out how to compromise, he wants his way or no way at all for the sake of his reputation. Those are my choices. I can have all the family he “has” to invite, or none of them. Which is no choice at all in my book. And utterly ridiculous when he keeps insisting that we have to have 300-400 family members minimum, before we even look at non-family we would choose to have there for either side.
By virtue of distance alone, we won’t be able to return the invitation to a great many people he feels he “owes” an invitation to (by the backwards logic of “they expect to return his wedding gift to them or their children”), a great number of our family are overseas… and a great number are in SoCal too. Based on the criteria “because I have to save face”, there are still a hell of a lot of people who can’t be invited. So why is it we can’t just invite the family that I actually know, keep in touch with or care about, and include a reasonable number of his-choice invites? That’s still a large number by itself.
This has me quite annoyed on principle. Quite frankly, his priorities shouldn’t only be his standing in the community or how he looks. This isn’t entirely, 100%, about him. He’s not paying for one cent of this and saying “don’t worry about it, I’ll handle all the details” doesn’t make it better. You can’t just push me out of a core part of our wedding and expect that I’ll be ok with that. I’m all about including his input, but I am NOT about rolling over and giving him everything he wants.
I’ve lived my whole adult life focusing on what would be best for my parents, isn’t it time he stepped up and cooperated?
/rant.
So I asked a pretty-exasperated PiC what he’d like. Guest list and other BS aside, what would he actually LIKE?
An Enchantment Under the Sea, a la Back to the Future theme, says he.
[headsplosion] Seriously??
Yes. {starts singing the song}
[hilarity ensues]
We can’t have a DeLorean because if no flux capacitor, then no DeLorean. Authenticity dammit!
Costumes? Sure. But for other people.
Wonder if we can get the local high school gym?
{text old high school friend who still FBs with high school administrators}
We’ll see!
How about Enchantment Under the Sea in the gym, and luau outside?
ROAST PIG. YES.
This could be expensive.
Or … not? Hm. Yes. It could be. If we’re going to do it, I’d like it to be cool, not slapdash. Also, I stipulate that I must have Wolverine something. If we’re going geek, I want something of mine represented.
Deal.
Being married and getting married. Two strange states of being when cast simultaneously.
Ugh I feel you on the wedding guest list! My parents had a huge list too and even worse, they are divorced but have some overlapping friends so I was constantly getting asked about where so and so was sitting and yet had to keep my mom and dad far, far apart. I hope you guys come to a resolution for your reception!
Oh my goodness. What a juggle you must have had… Sigh. How many people did you end up having?
Please do a roast pig! And post pics! 😀 (T floated doing a hangi – NZ Maori equivalent – but not really my thing, plus have veggo friends.)
I am annoyed at your dad on your behalf. I get the Asian family angle, and the reciprocity and saving face. But unless you’re stumping up $$$, you don’t really get a big say…
I’m sure that T and I both snore and we’re HEAVY mouth breathers. I’m a blanket hoarder, too. But we would never sleep in separate rooms = we both have trouble falling asleep without each other. Although, if he’s out late and I turn in before he’s home, apparently I get very territorial – eg if he tries to hug me I get agitated and shrug him off. I’m pretty sure that the way I fall asleep is the way I like to sleep all night. If we go to sleep cuddling, that’s fine. If I go to sleep alone in our big bed, I need my space, and cannot be disturbed. DO NOT ENCROACH.
Oh a roast pig is absolutely going to be there. Whatever the situation with the family.
And while I understand because obviously I grew up with it, but just because the guests will be expected to “cover” the wedding doesn’t mean that’s the ONLY important thing and I’m equally upset that a) he refuses to compromise or you know, CARE about what’s important to me by actually listening; b) it seems like this is 100% about them. Ugh.
Hah! I can imagine a sign goes up as soon as you fall asleep.
“He’s not paying for one cent of this” = then he doesn’t get a say about one cent of it.
Weddings are tough. It’d be nice if it was just about what the couple wants, but unfortunately, family makes it all about what they want. It’s ridiculous. People act as though it’s the last time they’ll see you or that this is IT, the BIG thing and then after this… which is silly. Because after the wedding, everyone goes home and forgets it a month later. My wife and I were downright stubborn about what we wanted with our wedding. If people wanted to help us financially with the wedding, we accepted, but the moment they started putting stipulations on it, we said to keep the money. Not worth it. When people would tell us what to do, we’d always just say, “Thank you, we’ll keep that in mind.” *shrug* And we did what we wanted. Some people were happy, some weren’t, again, *shrug*
I don’t think I’d have accepted money even if he had any but it’s the principle of the matter.
As my dad, I respect him enough to care about his opinions but the problem with that is a) we lost my mom not that long ago and he’s been acting abnormally since; b) in the Asian tradition, I’ve mentioned before, wedding traditions are a freaking juggernaut. It blows their mind to think of doing it any other way than: invite all the relatives and book a restaurant. Where he might have been more flexible before, he’s become .. difficult now.
So I have to find a good way to keep him included enough but not allow him to run roughshod over our plans.
I have to admit that I was really lucky in the fact that my Mom asked me to invite 1 person. That’s right one! And she couldn’t even come. I guess it helps when your parents don’t have any friends ;P
So, unfortunately I can’t be of much help in that department other than to say its your wedding and in the end its your call (especially if you guys are paying for it entirely). Its defintely hard to stand up to parents/family but in the end you have to do what’s best for you guys. Wedding planning is stressful enough without all the family drama!
I hope it works out for you guys.
Officially kind of jealous. 🙂 I suppose it’s not “easy” either way.
He snores. You do not.
Having slept with both of you, I can attest to this. Also, I’m shocked I didn’t smother him with his own pillow because 3am me is BRUTAL when she can’t sleep.
I re-read that line a couple of times and burst out laughing at how it sounds. And yes, I’ve forsworn friendships over snoring.