I never know when my wife’s alarm clock will go off these days.

She often brings home tons of paperwork from her job at the hospital, but rather than do it in the evening after dinner she passes out on the couch while watching TV. Sometimes she stays up all night finishing patients’ charts; some days she sets her alarm to go off at an insanely early hour so she can get up and do the reports before she leaves for work.

Like at 4am. Or at 3:45am.

Tonight, she went to bed shortly before midnight. Later, as I was finishing up my evening routine and was on my way to bed, I heard her alarm go off.

It was 2:15am.

That’s why I’m writing this post at 3:05am. You see, my wife never gets up right away. She hits the snooze bar at least seven times. That’s at least 63 minutes of shrill alarms at nine-minute intervals. Which means that there is no way I am going to be able to fall asleep during that time period.

So even though I wanted to go to bed 50 minutes ago, I can’t. I have to wait until Kara actually stops hitting the snooze bar and gets up to go do paperwork before I can crawl into bed and pass out — and then get up at 6:30am to feed the cats, pack her lunch, take her phone off the charger, make her coffee, and see her out the door to work on time. Then do the dishes. And then go back to bed.

After that, God help anyone who wakes me before noon.