IF SNORING'S NO LONGER CUTE, IT'S REALLY A WAKE-UP CALL.

Byline: The world according to Jacuzzi

Forget the Breathe Easy strips. And don't waste your precious money on sleep clinics, laser surgery, nasal sprays or mouth contraptions. If you want my completely biased snoring advice, here it is. It's not the snoring your spouse can't stand. It's you.

Want a cure? Move out. In my experience, how you feel about the snore is pretty much how you feel about the snorer.

Just think of Ben, my handyman and former flame. Snore-o-rama, let me tell you. Like a congested rhino. But in the beginning, when it was still coming up daisies and roses for the two of us, the snoring didn't bother me a bit. Later, as love cooled, his snoring became the bane of my nighttime existence.

And here's how I know the bane was Ben and not the snore itself. My dog Scout used to lie on the bed next to Ben and me. She would snore to beat the band and not bother me a bit, while Ben's snore came to grate on my every nerve ending. The mere sound of it sent toothpicks into my spine. I would lie awake like Kathy Bates in ``Misery,'' staring at him, getting angrier with each successive snort-hiss-pop-sigh. I would get up close to him, stare at his nose and wonder which nostril I could plug to make it stop.

Sometimes, I'd tape-record him and play him the lovely nose music the next morning, thinking he would be break into profuse apologies and offer to cut off his nose for me. But all he'd say was, ``What's the big deal. Scout snores like a buzz saw and I don't see you pushing her furry body onto the floor.''

She doesn't hum ``Green Acres'' while she showers, I'd retort. She doesn't clip her toenails on my bathroom floor. And furry as she may be, she doesn't have nose hair.

It's amazing how loony romance can make us. When I first started dating Ben, I would've wanted to gather each toenail clipping into a scrapbook arranged with pressed and dried wild meadow flowers. And how I adored his pungent body odor and his lack of knowing how to speak in sentences. It was all so charming.

But after a while, the over-the-top fondnesses all pretty much degenerated into loathing and annoyance. Maybe I'm just shallow. Or maybe I can't sustain the verve. Once the bloom was off the nose, his sweaty T-shirts began to stink, stepping on the toenail clippings with my bare feet would make me want to barf. And the snoring, the snoring.

Finally, one day, I had a talk with him. ``Ben, sweetie, baby, I like you a lot. You can come caulk my shower stall with your shirt off any time. But I think it's time you went and lived in the barn.''

He looked at me with those big eyes, sighed, gathered his smelly T-shirts together and moved out. It was for the best. Sending him out to live in the barn saved our friendship.

Now I can gaze lovingly at his biceps, feel warm when he mumbles or uses the subjunctive tense incorrectly, and know that he'll never interrupt my sessions of reading Esquire in bed with my big bowl of shredded wheat and milk ever again. I can gaze out my bedroom window, see the light on in the barn and know that someday he'll meet a nice sweet blushing gal who will love his toenails, his nose hair, his B.O. and his snore. It just won't be me.