I’m reaching out to listeners and readers for advice as I share this first of many sketches on today’s topic: my poor husband’s snoring. This is, “The Andy Griffith Theme Song.”
Well, this is a new one. I mean -- I was aware that he loved Mayberry, but really? Those are the first seven notes of the Andy Griffith theme. Do-do doo, doo do-doo do. Well, I can sleep through the real show, maybe I can sleep through this. Damn. I probably could, except that it’s a continuous loop of those same seven notes. If I wanted to hear the same seven notes all night, I would log on to Pandora.
Well, at least I am armed with solutions this time. I’ve always heard that if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. So I have consulted the definitive expert on midnight diagnoses, (Google), and have come up with a battle plan. According to my consultations with Dr. Google, I should first determine the type of snore that emanates from my husband. The only problem I can perceive with this first step is that Joel is rather a jack-of-all-snores. If it weren’t so late, and I wasn’t so tired, I would probably enjoy the suspense of wondering what the hell is going to come out of that man’s face next. But I have to start somewhere.
So tonight, I am checking for “nasal snoring.” Nasal snorers have blocked sinus passages, causing too much air to come through the mouth. If he is a nasal snorer, he will respond to a clearing of those passages. Since nothing changed when I jammed a cotton swab covered with Vick’s Vapor Rub up his nose holes the other night, I’m bringing out my big guns now.
I have succumbed and purchased an essential oil diffuser and an oil called “Breathe” from a friend who sells 13 different home-based products. When I turn the loaded diffuser on, a smell that takes me back to the good old days when my mom used Pinesol disinfectant to clean the toilets fills the air. Along with the mist, the diffuser emits a low white noise that may help me sleep as well, although I suspect I would need a full-throttle jet engine next to the bed to fully block my husband’s snore.
I understand that if the essential oil works at all, it won’t be instantaneous. I could read while I wait, but the whistling is so distracting. I wonder if he’s really breathing much of the oil. Come to think of it, if he is a nasal snorer, he probably isn’t getting much in his passages at all, because nasal snorers are mouth breathers. I look at my handsome husband lying so comfortably beside me. His mouth is open wide enough to stuff in a tennis ball – no – a softball. I reach over and gently push his gorgeous dimpled chin up. It’s amazing that the same Cary Grant chin that was instrumental in my initial attraction to Joel, now makes me want separate bedrooms. Possibly houses.
Holding his mouth shut with one hand, I grab a decorative bolster pillow and wedge it between his neck and his chin. There. It’s working. Andy Griffith decrescendos. All I can hear now is the soft humming of the oil diffuser.
I can finally rest. I slide down between the covers. Who needs separate bedrooms when you have decorative bolsters and oil diffusers?
When I was a kid, we lived on a farm with a cesspit, as I’m sure many listeners did and do. Periodically, we had to suck out the sewage using a Honey Wagon, powered with a tractor and a PTO shaft. This was a large, red tank with a hose attached. We kids, I’m embarrassed to admit, rather liked to watch the process. It was one of those “can’t-look-away” fascinations as the level of muck lowered in the pit, finally revealing the floor of the cesspit. At the very end of the process, my dad would sling the Honey Wagon hose all about in the corners, making sure to get every last bit of sludge. The horrific sucking and slurping sound, interrupted by thunks, as chunks of God-knows-what were drawn up the hose, is the noise that now emanates from Joel’s nostrils.
