She only sleeps this soundly during daylight hours.
**Editor’s Note: Yes, this is the second post in a week about dogs. Apparently it’s a theme.**
Every day, at 4 a.m., I try to strike a deal with the devil.
I’ve tried to sell my soul so many times… over an extra few hours of sleep.
“Please,” I silently beg, “just let me sleep until 6… Please…”
The devil will have none of it.
She plants her feet on the side of the bed and sticks her nose in my face. Or she doesn’t actually get in my mug at all but chooses — or rather, chewses — instead to get my attention by gnawing holes into my things: slippers, shoeboxes, towels pulled off the rack. This is why we live like college students with mismatched towels in the bathroom rather than respectable middle-aged adults with coordinated linens.
This is no metaphorical devil. Oh no. She is real. Very real. And cute. Stinkin’ cute. This devil is a fluffy white, freckle-nosed pain in the butt.
Sigh.
I have tried to buy myself a good night’s sleep by doing what you’re never supposed to do — negotiating with the terrorist.
She’s not allowed on the bed — Joe’s orders — so I will grab my pillow and trudge into No. 1’s temporarily open bedroom. It’s actually been the one thing that softens the blow of her being off at college — I get an escape room. Because a lot of the times, I am double-whammied at night, not by just the dog but also my roommate snoooooorrrring. I didn’t have the heart to tell him in our last HOA bulletin there was an item about keeping neighborhood pets inside between the hours of 1:30 and 5:30 a.m. because of multiple reports of a very large predator that sounds like a bellowing walrus crossed with a freight train. This was, without a doubt, my husband sawing some logs.
So I’ll evacuate with Dog No. 3 trotting happily behind me and no sooner have I tossed the pillow on the bed, then she’s hopped up and settled in. For a 27-pounder, she is quite the bed hog. She likes to be right up against me and sometimes that means between my feet, which is awkward and uncomfortable, or she is content to nestle into my knee pits when I’m curled up on my side. She just likes some part of her body touching mine.
Trying to get a good night’s sleep is so very hard, thanks to this creature, but I also have no doubt that I have never been loved this much by anyone. Ever. Not even that Christmas that the kids scored a Wii.
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