Bedroom Games

The phrase “bedroom games” means something different to you at every stage of your marriage and/or relationship with a significant other. When you’re a newlywed, it will most likely be construed as an exciting event, with two lovers getting hot and heavy under the covers. Perhaps one of them may dress up as Pocahontas and the other as a Serbian cosmonaut – you know…just for fun.

But then after a certain point in your relationship, the term “bedroom games” takes on a completely different meaning. In my marriage for example, our games have nothing to do with romance and they are rarely amorous. Our latest game is “I bet I can lay here longer than you while this baby cries.”

My daughter Liya is 5 ½ months old now, and just started sleeping in 6 hour stretches during the night last week. That means one of us has been responsible for getting up and feeding her at 2 and 4 am – that “one” generally being me. I started a new job this week, and I have decided it’s just as important for me to get a full night’s sleep as it is for my husband. So this morning, when Liya began to whimper and suck her fingers, signaling that she was hungry, I ignored her muffled sounds. Slowly, her cries became more and more insistent until the crescendo ended in a full blown furious scream. I pulled the pillow off of my head, got up and went downstairs to the cold kitchen to make her a bottle. My attempt to turn on all the lights over the bed and blind my husband in revenge was thwarted because he had unscrewed the bulb (or something). These are the type of games we play in our bedroom. There’s that and:

• If I leave these sheets on the floor, maybe she’ll pick them up
• Perhaps I’ll throw my clean jeans in with the dirty ones so she won’t know which to wash

And my personal favorite

• When I do feed this baby, I’m going to leave the bottles on my side of the bed for days so you’ll have to dig the reserves out of the pantry if you can

Sometimes we play Bathroom Wars. Like Bedrooom Games, I generally loose at this sport as well. This is when my husband leaves the toilet seat up at 3 am and I fall in 30 minutes later, or when he shaves his facial hair into a towel, drops it onto the floor and I walk by and unknowingly shake out his course follicles onto the already dirty carpet. Work and yet more work!

I am looking forward to the next phase of Bedroom Games though – When all the children are grown and gone, and my husband and I are looking lovingly across the table at each other at lunch time. We’ll be a matured couple then, both senile in our 80’s. He’ll tenderly grab my hand and guide me to our bedroom, gingerly dragging both our oxygen masks behind us. As I’ll attempt to undress with any sensuality that I can muster, we’ll lie our naked, wrinkly bodies in the bed and stare at one another first with desire, then in confusion.

“Okay…now why did we get into bed again?”

“I dunno. The sun’s still up. Can’t be time to go to sleep.”

“You’re right…Wanna grab a sandwich?”

“Sure. Hand me my teeth.”

I’ll go pee and probably fall in the toilet as I’ve been doing for the duration of our marriage.

Score:

Hubby – 1000

Me – 0