It was a rather late hour, later than I cared to admit, when I tiptoed in from the guest bedroom to our bedroom. Jeff was mostly awake, but not quite, as I slipped in under the covers and snuggled up next to him.

"I had bad dreams last night," I said, leaving it at that. Jeff has shared the same bed with me long enough to know that when I have bad dreams, I tend to awaken out of them only to go right back in them. The end result: a long night, filled with multiple awakenings, with little useful sleep actually acquired. When nights like this happen, I end up moving to the guest bedroom so that Jeff, at least, will get a quiet night of sleep.

Morning was almost over, but the sluggish darkness from around the mini-blinds spoke of storm clouds, making it appear much earlier in the morning. Behind my head, the rain slashed against the windowpane. Perfect. He yawned, I yawned, and pulled the covers up to my neck.

"Every month should have a rainy Saturday, on principle, so we can have an excuse to stay in bed like this. Won't be fun when we go to lunch, though."

"I was thinking," he said, "that maybe after we get up and get showers, we could go over to the new Atlanta Bread Company store. I'm in the mood for some of their soup." He punctuated his sentence with a long, lazy stretch.

"That would require getting out of bed."

"Hmm. That could be a problem."

I pictured what would make my day absolutely perfect. "After that, I was thinking about wandering over to the bookstore and just nosing around for a couple of hours. Wanna go?"

He rolled over onto his back, tucked an arm around me, and said, "I could go for that."

"I don't have anything in particular that I'm looking for. It's just that spending a couple of hours in a good bookstore on a rainy, stormy Saturday seems like the perfect thing to do. But we still have to get out of bed first." We stared quietly at each other, both of us a little blinded by our lack of glasses. Still, no one moved. Not even when Tenzing hopped up on the bed to chirrup happily at our wakened state.

"A late lunch, then a bit of poking around at the bookstore…sounds good to me. Guess I'll get a shower first." He tossed back his portion of the covers and padded to the bathroom. He turned on the spray of water to let it warm before getting in. Eventually, I threw back my portion of the covers, found the clothing I wanted to wear today, and fed the cats—and found myself wishing that it would rain again tomorrow, just like today.

Sometimes, I thought, life and marriage live up to their billing.