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31 January 2009

Waking up


Mornings have never been my fortay. I am rudely awakened way too early by my alarm clock. I reach over blindly and smash my hand on the snooze button. I try to go back to sleep but thoughts flood my previously peaceful, resting mind - Who on earth would get up at this ungodly hour, Just 15 more minutes. Sometimes I would cry. Once I dragged myself out of bed and had a cup of coffee, I'd be alright. But it's the getting out bed that I'm seriously not good at.

Somethings changed in the last year though. Now, my peaceful sleep is interrupted by a sharp jab in my back as my yellow lab, Huckleberry, stretches out to get more comfortable in between us. I open my eyes, carefully, so as not to let on that I am awake yet. But my change in breathing gives it away. Suddenly, our other two labs have somehow managed to go from a complete sleep to leaping up in the air and landing on me, smothering me in wet kisses. As I fight for air and protect my ribs, I try to play dead. Maybe I can trick them and they'll go back to sleep. It almost works. Just as they settle down and prepare to go back to sleep, that rude alarm clock goes off and all hell breaks loose. The boys start wrestling and rolling around on the bed. We burrow our heads under the pillows looking for that last few minutes of sleep. We finally realize that it's not going to happen so we give in to the fight.

We turn over on our backs and accept the kisses and the jabs as the dogs welcome us to a brand new day. It's a new day, yay, we woke up again! They are so happy. After the initial excitement, they settle down and spoon up next to us, tails thumping and tongues licking our faces. The only dog that doesn't move is Huckleberry. She's still getting her beauty sleep, protected from the chaos, burrowed in between us. I used to wake up with my arm around my husband. Now I wake up with my arm around a dog.

We laugh at them, pet them and cuddle with them. Taking in their happiness of this brand new day. We still can't get out of bed. We hit the snooze button a few more times as we all lounge together in a pile of covers. What gets us out of bed? A dog farts and we jump up as fast as can and clear the bedroom.

Anyway, my point is, for dogs, every day is the best day, every meal is the best meal, every walk is the best walk. They live in the here and the now. They don't worry about what happened yesterday or what will happen today. They are just happy that they woke up. It's a good lesson and one that I've been trying to learn when that alarm clock interrupts my dreams. Now, instead of crying, I snuggle with my dogs as they re-teach me this lesson every morning.

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