You know all those “national days of whatever” that I’m always telling you about? Well, I’ve finally come up with one of my own. It’s “National Just Go to Bed Night”.
National Just Go to Bed Night doesn’t apply to men, because men don’t need it. When men are tired they just go to bed. Women, on the other hand, think that “Go to bed” means “Get up and do about thirty more things and then go to bed.”
I would venture to say that in most married households, bedtime goes something like this:
Man: “Let’s go to bed.”

Woman: “Okay.”
Man goes to bed. Woman starts the dishwasher, fills the coffeemaker, lets the dog (or cat) in (or out), turns down the furnace, plugs in the phones, throws away the empty bag of popcorn, picks up a wet towel, turns off the living room and kitchen lights, gets ready for bed and finally, goes to bed.
Man hollers “What’s taking so long?”
Now, I wouldn’t make a big deal of this if I weren’t so jealous. How come men have it all figured out and women don’t? What gene is in the male makeup that makes them so oblivious to the dozen things that need to be done on the way to bed?
Men are not that blind about other things. They can see a tire is low from 20 feet away. They can see if a football player stepped out of bounds from 500 feet away. A husband can tell if his wife gains weight before she’s done eating the Twinkie. But he can go to bed and go to sleep with every light in the house on.
I mentioned this once to my husband and he said, “Nobody’s forcing you to do all that stuff, just go to bed.”
But if I were to wake up and all the lights were on, the house was hot, there was trash on the floor, the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes, the dog was out and the phones were dead, it would not bode well. I would be grouchy. He would be grouchy. The dog would be grouchy. In fact, it would not be the start of a good day.
So, ladies, I propose National Just Go to Bed Night. For just this one night, you can go to bed like a man. No chores, no tidying, no nothing. Just one thing, though. If you wake up and the house is a disaster and the dog’s mad at you, you’d better have a good supply of Twinkies.