For the next 15 minutes, I’m going to simply write what’s on my mind; a good ol’ fashioned David Haznaw stream of conscious, complete with random thoughts and parenthetical asides burning in my head at this very moment. I’m setting the timer at 15:00, and when it hits 0:00, I’m out.
Last night was one of the best night’s sleeps I’ve had in a long time.
(Man, that’s a clumsy phrase, “best night’s sleeps.” Now, I’m questioning myself: is “night” supposed to be possessive? Do I need the apostrophe? Maybe I should have just said, “Last night, I slept really well.” I’m starting over.)
Last night, I slept really well, better than usual.
(“Better than usual” was a nice touch, a qualifier that gives the audience a look into my usual sleep pattern.) I had dreams, good dreams. I can’t remember them, but I do recall they were good, maybe even funny. (Even if I could remember them, I probably wouldn’t share them since it could incite all the “dream people” out there – you know who you are – to start analyzing them, and if you told me what they meant, maybe I wouldn’t feel as good about them … or myself. I’m not criticizing people who analyze dreams, or questioning the validity of such work, just making an observation.)
So, I’m going to let that sleeping dog lie, which is exactly what I did this morning. To explain, lately Sadie (our dog) has been waking up between 3:45 and 4:15 a.m. every morning, and if I don’t get up with her, or at least acknowledge her (usually with some statement of endearment like, “Sadie! Go back to sleep!” only to get up with her three minutes later), she will eventually start to bark.
However, this morning, she didn’t do that. She “slept in” (if you can call 4:36 a.m. “sleeping in”). And, even though I bragged about the great sleep I had, I actually woke up at 4:13 a.m., likely out of habit, even though Sadie had yet to stir. (“Sadie had yet to stir.” It has a rhythm to it, doesn’t it? Like a line from a Poe story.)
At first, I lay there (now that I think about it, shouldn’t it be “Let sleeping dogs lay?”), I started to worry about Sadie. I couldn’t hear her snoring. (She snores, much like the other member of the family who gets up between 3:45 and 4:15 a.m. most days.) That made me wonder if she was OK, and that made me worry. (All this wonder and worry started happening just after I looked at the clock and thought to myself, “Man, I don’t know when I’ve ever been so snug and comfortable in this bed. As long as Sadie is still sleeping, I’m not getting up until 5:00 today.”)
I let my comfortable (physical) self lay there for a bit as my uncomfortable (emotional) self wondered and worried if Sadie was alive. Which led me – at 4:36 a.m., long before my 5:00 a.m. goal – to get out of bed. Before my feet even hit the floor, I heard Sadie scramble to her feet, as if she had just realized she had overslept, hoping it wouldn’t make her late for work.
ASIDE: I’m short, and our bed is high, so there is a latency period from the time I swing my legs over the side of the bed to my feet hitting the floor. This means I have to “slide down the side just a touch to plant my feet before I stand up. It’s the same in those rare instances when I’ve been upgraded to first-class on an airline; because the seats are larger and deeper, my feet don’t touch the floor, making me feel like a six-year-old. For me, it’s not embarrassing (emotionally), just uncomfortable (physically). Well, it was embarrassing that one time when the flight attended offered to bring a small stool on which to rest my feet during the flight. I declined.
Anyway, by the time I made my way around the bed, Sadie was already awake (“Whew! She’s OK!”) and shuffling her way down the stairs to the kitchen, where I’d find her standing patiently next to her bowl (If that’s even something dogs – or any animals – can be … patient; I think it’s just instinct or habit or something, isn’t it?), waiting for me to feed her.
Which I did. And then, she stood there for a moment (as if she was thinking, “Why did you get me up? I was having so many great dreams, and I had planned to sleep in this morning. You should have just let me lay there,” proving that even she knows the proper usages of “lie” and “lay”), eventually deciding to go back to bed, leaving me alone to start my day. So, that led me to … wait, that’s 15 minutes. I’m done.
Enjoy your day.
© 2020 David R. Haznaw