Getting ready for bed.

As I lay in bed, struggling to stay awake to see the end of "No Country for Old Men", my wife reached past my empty popcorn bowl to retrieve the remote control, carefully resting in its customary place between my left thigh and my crotch.

I think I place it there because I can never stop instinctively guarding that area. As a man, I can be blindfolded and earplugged and tell you exactly when you penetrate the one-foot zone around my scrotal area. So, keeping the remote there makes sense. I'll always know if someone is trying to take it from me.

In this case, I glanced quickly to my wife's hand, and my reflexes told me to shift and grab. However, in the interest of peace (and other less chivalrous motives), I lay still as she picked up the CONTROLLER and paused Tommy Lee Jones mid-sentence.

I shot a look at the clock wondering if it was early enough for it to be nookie night but it said what I feared and loathed: "11:53 pm". Those red digital numbers have it out for me.

"I know you want to watch the rest of the movie but you're going to be miserable tomorrow morning if you stay up any later" my wife said as she stood up and left me staring at the unpopped kernels in my popcorn bowl.

As if reading my mind about the nookie night, she grabbed her pillows and added "I'm going to sleep on the couch so you can get some sleep tonight".

In my best Tommy Lee Jones (which sounds nothing like Tommy Lee Jones) but more like the gravelly voiced ex-smoker that I am, I retorted in male chauvenist satire: "Damn right you are".

She pretended not to hear me and I didn't press the matter. I got up, took the popcorn bowl to the dishwasher, then followed her upstairs. I grabbed my dental floss and began working out the popcorner residue stuck to my teeth.

It took 35 years, 2 root-canals, gum-surgery, and dental tools against exposed nerves but I finally learned that flossing was an essential daily thing. For the last 2 years, there have been no days off.

What's sexier than flossing in front of your wife? Just about everything. It's a good time for her to talk about things, though.

So she did. I might have heard what she said but I didn't retain it past the two-second mark. I did catch the last thing she said as she picked up a pair of her old pants from the end of the bed and started for the door. "These have a big old hole in the butt so I'm gonna throw these away!"

I started to say something about the convenience of a pair of pants with a big old hole in the butt but decided on what I thought would be funnier and quipped "I have a big old hole in my butt. What are you going to do with me?"

Again, she did not acknowledge my attempt at humor. I knew she heard me and she knew that I knew she heard me but she was too cool to give me the satisfaction. I flashed back to the memory of the first time I laughed about her. She said "Ha ha hell" and cut me a look that had me roaring in laughter.

But tonight, she wouldn't play along.

I felt like I was in one of those movies where the dead person's spirit is trying to talk to their living loved one and they are screaming their name right in front of their face but their loved one can't hear them.

Well, maybe not that bad, but kinda along those lines.

If people were watching my life as a movie, would they laugh? Or would they just fall asleep?

Hello? Are you there? Wake up, already!