Under the dark, velvety cover of night, we escape to the world of dreams, a place that is never as restful as we hope

During our weekly Bountiful Boulevard Sunday Stroll, over a chorus of "Nice bum where you from!" from low-IQ jailbait high school boys, Danica Nicole Moran suggests that I write a comprehensive guide to dealing with awkward situations because I've been in so many of them and emerged triumphant. I check the dictionary.com definition of "triumphant" from my imaginary iPhone and it doesn't say anything about wounded dignity or people sometimes thinking you have a speech impediment. But I decide to write a comprehensive guide to dealing with awkward situations even though I evidently can't deal with them myself. It's kind of like how they say the best therapists are the kind of people who hide babies in dumpsters or have unresolved Oedipus complexes.  

First Installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" series:

Dealing with Awkward Things that Happen While You're Asleep

(I realize this is a weird one to start with, just go with it)

Awkward Situation #1: You fall asleep on your arm and it goes completely dead

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG WHOSE ARM IS IN MY BED RIGHT NOW?!

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Check to make sure the arm is actually attached to your body without actually looking at the arm so you don't have to think about how weird it is that it's not moving. 
• If the arm is attached to your body:
• Scooch to the edge of the bed (or couch if you have transgressed against your partner) and use your undead arm (zombie arm ooooOOOOooo) to toss your dead arm over the side so the fingers are pointing towards the ground.
• As the blood creeps creepily back into your arm, twitch your fingers one by one to determine whether or not they are receiving messages from your brain yet. If they are not, repeat steps 1 and 2.
• Resume sleeping.

• If the arm is not attached to your body:
• If it's not your arm, scream, cry, puke, pass out or whatever you have to do, then run away and call 911 immediately because THERE IS A &%*# ARM IN YOUR BED.
• If it is your arm, stifle the bleeding and report to the hospital immediately. Embark on your new life as an amputee. Make a cardboard sign and find a high-traffic underpass for street peddling. 

Awkward Situation #2: You crunch up one of your blankets at the foot of the bed and in your delirious state, you cannot seem find it

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG THE BLANKET SNATCHER IS AT LARGE

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Try your best to remember if you actually even had the blanket when you went to sleep. Neglecting to do this is a common blanket-cruncher mistake which causes undue anxiety.
• As sleep-delirium subsides, use your dominant foot to do a sweep of the foot of the bed to find any crunched up fabric.
• To re-cover yourself with the blanket, do what I coined three seconds ago as the "caterpillar": hook the blanket around your foot and bring your knee to your chest. Then use your hands to grab the blanket and spread it over yourself.
• Resume sleeping.

Awkward Situation #3: You expel some kind of bodily fluid 

(I can think of 9, can you name them all?)

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG HOW DID I NOT NOTICE UNTIL NOW?!

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Try to determine which bodily fluid it is. You may have to do a sniff test, which is super gross but often necessary. You may also have to use common sense: for example, if only your pillow is wet, it is most likely not pee. And if it IS pee, congratulations on pulling that off because that must have involved some pretty spectacular sleep-acrobatics.
• If it is a harmless fluid such as sweat, drool, or tears
• Change your sheets/pillowcase if you deem it necessary. Turn on the A/C (or take your menopause medication), close your mouth, fix your broken heart, or make any other necessary accommodations to ensure that it won't happen again. Resume sleeping.
• If it is ANYTHING ELSE (*it should be noted that this has never actually happened to me, so don't assume that I'm speaking from experience here):
• If you are a nasty person with terrible hygiene, resume sleeping.
• If you have any self-respect, remove sheets/blankets/all affected areas at once to avoid seepage. If someone else is in the bed with you, wake them up and tell them a brilliantly crafted lie that will get them out of bed and into a garage or closet, which you will lock them in for approximately fifteen minutes. Take everything off the bed, throw it in the bathtub, dump some Shout over the top of it, and turn the water on. When it's kinda clean, drape all linens awkwardly over the furniture to dry. Make SURE to wash them properly in the washing machine on a warm cycle at your earliest convenience.
• Replace linens, fetch your bed mate from the garage or closet, and resume sleeping if you can forgive yourself.

Awkward Situation #4: Your partner/person you are forced to share a bed with due to space limitations is a compulsive covers-hogger

Your first thought upon waking might be: OMFG I'M SO COLD RIGHT NOW

How to deal with it:

• Remain calm. Do not wake up the other person. The point is to be the least rude you possibly can. You are not the villain here. They are. 
• If there is something else you can cover yourself with. i.e., a blanket that is not currently in use, a towel, a sweatshirt, a cat, use that. Then the other person will feel bad the whole next day while you assert that "really, it's fine. I was fine."
• If there is no adequate covers-substitute readily available:
• Do not pull the covers away all at once. A huge yank will wake the other person up and begin a covers war that you are much too passive to win. You must recover the covers (hehe) by degrees. 
• To do this, grab a corner or whatever slice of the covers you can get your mildly hypothermic hands on and (slowly!) pull it towards you. Then you must roll onto your other side. Then wait a few moments and do it again. Doing this will gradually unroll the covers off the other person and onto yourself. If the other person wakes up, they will assume you are just harmlessly sleep-rolling and will be more likely to forgive you. 
• Once you are adequately covered, resume sleeping. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of "Dealing with Awkward Situations and Not Getting Burned, Only a Little Charred" series with "Dealing with Awkward Things that Happen in Passing."