4:30 a.m. Fun

We mysteriously lost power one night this week at about 4:30 a.m. Mind you, there were no storms. There weren't even clouds. I woke up because Drew's alarm clock said something weird and unintelligible it doesn't normally say.

Now, before you think I'm crazy writing about alarm clocks that talk to me, I want you to know it's a Moshi brand clock I got at Brookestone for Drew's birthday, and it takes voice commands--pretty tech-savvy, huh? Most of the time, though, it doesn't understand us. When we try to tell her (Moshi has a female voice) to set the alarm for, say, 8:30 a.m., she thinks we're saying 3:30 p.m. or 9:20 a.m. Sometimes it takes us 15 minutes to set the time or the alarm, when it'd take 10 seconds to do it manually. Some really great technology there...

Anyway.

So Moshi said something ridiculous, and being a fairly light sleeper, I woke up. She was all lit up and the time was blinking 12:00 a.m. My clock was blinking midnight, too: a tale-tale sign that we'd lost power. Plus the fan was off, and we'd turned it on before bed.

"Drew," I muttered, pissed off that I was going to have yet ANOTHER night of insomnia (have 'em frequently these days) when I'd even gotten in bed early that night just to TRY to get some dad-gum SLEEP. "I dunno whas wrong with the clocks." (By the way, I was drugged on Benadryl.) "Whatimes it?"

He jerked his head up, squinting, his brow furrowed with more lines than a Six Flags amusement park in the dead of summer. "What?"

"The clocks. They'rong. C'n you see what time i-is?"

He stumbled out of bed and went into the other room to get his phone. I got up and eyes-nearly-closed-so-as-not-to-wake-up-fully fumbled my way to the toilet to pee.

A strange light shone outside the window (probably the full moon), but I feared the worst: UFO's. Had to be.

But if I didn't focus on them and just thought about sleep instead, the Grey aliens might read my mind and realize I wasn't interested or afraid of them and then they'd get bored and leave.

Drew came back in and told me it was 4:30 a.m. Great. Stupid aliens!! Don't they realize people have to get up and go work for the MAN in a couple hours?!?

We re-set the clocks, got back into bed, and then it started:

Beep! ...

Beep! ...

Beep! ...

The friggin' smoke detector's battery was low. Why can't it do that beeping in the daytime? Drew and I lay there for a couple minutes. I realized pretty quickly that the noise had to stop if I was going to doze off at all, so I said:

"Drew?"

That's ALL I said! But he let out this grunt/huff and stormed out of bed, as if reading my mind. (The aliens must've been radiating a telepathy vibe.)

"Hey, don't be mad! You don't have to get up in the morning!" I curled back into my pillow. "You can sleep in as much as you want."

The hall bathroom light flicked on, and I waited. And waited. And waited. When I peeked out of the covers, there was Drew, beneath the beeping smoke detector, which was high up on the wall. He was just standing there in his blue underwear, looking terribly confused. Before I could tell him he needed to get a chair to be able to reach the device, he disappeared into another room. (Telepathy again.)

Then...

Scrape...

Scrape...

Scrape...

Peeking out into the hall again, I suddenly laughed myself awake as Drew slid a chair across the carpet, inches at a time--a chair that I could've lifted with one hand. He dragged it, taking little baby steps, so completely out of it, there in his navy blue underwear and wearing nothing else at 4:30 a.m.

Once he climbed up on the chair it took him another minute to figure out how to get the detector open. There came from his mouth sleepy mutterings, curses, and sighs. And finally, he reached success.

Ah, sweet silence.

Drew crawled back into bed. I sighed a "Thank you" and gave him a kiss on the cheek. With his eyes shut, he smiled.

I think by then the aliens had already flown away because I wasn't worried about them too much anymore and quickly drifted off to sleep. I swear, if they randomly shoot off our power again in the middle of the night, I'm going to telepathically shoot them the finger. We'll see THEN if they continue to mess with us, those jerks!