With a contented sigh, I let the thoughts of snow, and sub-freezing temperatures, and other people’s achievement awards drain from my mind, dwelling instead on the comfortable warmth of the heated waterbed.

Lazily slithering my arm beneath the sheets, I hooked it around Felicity, my wife of just over nine years. She let out a sleepy murmur and snuggled herself closer against me. Her long, auburn curls were pinned neatly atop her head, looking for all the world like they had been arranged there just moments ago. I was still amazed at her ability to crawl out of bed looking just as she did when she crawled in. Astonished as I was, I had long since given up trying to figure out how she managed to do it.

I allowed my one open-but barely focused-eye to roam in the direction of her alarm clock. The radiant, electric blue digits shone back at me, attesting to a time of 4:47 a.m. In my mind, I was fully aware that Felicity kept her clock set fifteen minutes fast. A psychological trick used by millions in order to be on time. Of course, for the majority of those millions, since they knew the clock was fast to begin with, the trick failed to work. In the case of my lovely wife, not only did the ruse falter miserably, it simply caused her to be even later. I stubbornly attempted the mental calculation to subtract the phantom fifteen minutes from the displayed time of 4:47. Unfortunately, in my half-conscious state, I succeeded only in giving myself a headache and producing a string of meaningless numbers. Though for some reason, the ratio twenty-two to eighteen kept returning to the forefront.

Finally, I dismissed the entire process, along with its product, in favor of the infinitely more pleasant nether world between sleep and wakefulness. Judging by the nightmare that followed, I wish I had concentrated on the equation a little harder.