A Rude Awakening

The morning began like this... "Honey... We need to talk..."

No conversation that starts with "we need to talk" is ever going to be a good one. Let me give you some back story...

I am NOT a morning person! You can ask anyone in my family, they will tell you that I do not get up until I absolutely HAVE to get up to be some place. I have always been this way. I like to take my time and wake up slowly. So when we were first married, and Mr. P had to wake up earlier than I did, I would get a rude awakening!

I would lie there in bed every day of the week listening to Mr. P getting his breakfast - making so much noise! He'd slam cupboards, kick the fridge closed, and seemingly throw drawers back in place. We lived in a very small, old home at the time - it had been built in the '30s as a farmhand bunkhouse - and the cupboard doors and drawers were warped and a tight fit and were very hard to open and close!

Each morning, as I laid there in bed trying to get a little more beauty sleep - Heaven knows I need all I can get - I just knew he was doing it on purpose to wake me up. I knew he was jealous that I could sleep-in, and that he felt like I should wake up with him, so I got more and more upset. But we were just married, and I'm not one who likes confrontation, so I kept quiet about it for a while - thinking he'd eventually get the idea that I wasn't getting up - no matter how noisy he was. 

So, After nearly a month of mornings of ear torture - lying in bed wishing I were the deaf one, I finally got fed up and confronted him about it - ready for a fight. "Honey..."

His reply? He didn't fight... He didn't defend himself... He simply apologized and said he had no idea he was was being so noisy.

At first I didn't really believe him, because it seemed almost impossible to me that no one, in his entire life, had ever told him about how much noise cupboards and drawers can make. Then I realized that he was raised by a deaf mother - mothers typically teach these kinds of things, "Don't slam the doors dear..." She didn't know either! I felt pretty foolish for being upset for so long about something he was innocently doing.  

Since then, he has tried to be sure to keep things quiet - most of the time. Now I can tell when he's preoccupied, in a hurry, or upset about something - he starts banging around in the kitchen - just as any other person would do. It helps that the kitchen in our current home is on a different floor than our bedroom - and soft-close hardware helps too... I now have much fewer rude awakenings (now, his wake-up-to-a-heart-attack alarm clock is a whole different story)!

Does this happen in your house? How have you dealt with it? Leave us a comment and let us know!

-- Mrs. P