INSOMNIA BY MAGGIE
Sorry if I look a little haggard today. It’s just that I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.
The problem for my sleepless nights, unfortunately, is very cute, so it’s difficult to stay mad at her. You see, my Basset Hound, Maggie, has apparently made it her sole purpose in life to ensure that I never, ever get more than seven consecutive minutes of sleep.
It started a few months ago. I awoke feeling a pressing on my chest, prohibiting me from breathing. Understandably, this was disturbing, as I usually opt to breathe during my sleep. As my eyes adjusted for the light and my arms flailed to get my wife’s attention, I realized that it was Maggie, standing on my chest, tail wagging and face grinning.
For those of you not familiar with Bassets, they are not small dogs. I always thought they were, until I got Maggie, who weighs 640 pounds. This is a lot of dog to have sitting on your chest at three in the morning.
She then began her whine. Maggie has developed the shrillest, most grating whine that you can imagine. Although she is purebred, I am suspicious that she is part Fran Drescher. Maggie’s whine signifies one of two things: (1) she is thirsty or (2) she has to go to the great big potty out back. (If Maggie has any Lassie instincts and was trying to tell me that Timmy was in the well, he bought it years ago. Sorry, Timmy. I thought she was just thirsty.)
This presents an interesting dilemma. One option is to get up and get Maggie some water. If you do this, she will drink it whether she’s thirsty or not. She loves her water.
A second option is to ignore her. This works well if she is indeed just thirsty. However, if she has other business to tend to, it can start your day off very unpleasantly when you step out of bed into said business.
The third option is the one I always choose. I get out of bed and take Maggie outside, where she can have all of the water and bathroom space her stubby little self desires.
However, the problem with this option is that I am now awake, and I’ll be lucky if I can get back to sleep. Usually, I begin to doze off just as my alarm begins blaring. And that’s not pleasant, as I have my alarm set to a country station. (The reason I have it set to a country station is so that I am sure to spring out of bed to turn off the alarm. If I enjoyed the music, I would just lie in bed listening to it. If it were close by, I would continually hit snooze. It’s not that I have anything against country music, it’s just that it is bad and should be made illegal, much like heroin, pipe bombs, and rap.)
Now, where were we? That’s right, country mus...no...wait...sleep. That’s right. OK, so anyway, once Maggie has summoned me from the bed, the rest of the night’s sleep is pretty much shot. Sometimes, I lie in bed and think about all of the things that I will do the next day, or all of the things I should have done the day before. More often, however, I think of far away exotic places in the world, and how I would like to travel there. And how I would not be able to hear Maggie from there, should I happen to leave her there on my journey.
But then I look down at Maggie, and see her sweet, brown eyes and think, I gave that dog to my wife for her birthday. If I have so much as a bad thought about that dog, my wife will make sure that the only good nights’ sleep I get is under the patio table out back.
Eventually, I make it to the morning, and I head to work a little groggy. I wonder when people at work are going to start talking. "Boy, he looks rough today," or "What do you think is wrong with him?" or "Third day in a row he’s forgotten to wear pants." I usually sleep walk through the day. By the time I get home, I am so exhausted, I am ready to go straight to sleep. Of course, at that point I usually realize it’s 10 a.m., and that people might start wondering where I am.
I tried one solution in which I treated the symptom (sleepiness) rather than the illness (Maggieitis) -- I decided I would take a quick refresher nap right after work. When I got home, I settled into my recliner, and closed my eyes. I then sprung up in horror, screaming in pain, as the cat had pounced on my stomach, her claws fully extended.
With the cat safely stowed in a back room, I resumed by nap. I was drifting off to sleep, thinking happy thoughts (Pamela Anderson and Catherine Zeta Jones, arguing over who got to bring me the next beer), when I heard, "WOOOOOOOOFF!!!!"
Thinking Chewbacca was in the backyard, I hopped out of my chair, and there I saw Maggie, again ensuring that no sleep would be had. (There’s another fact most people don’t know about Bassets -- their bark is roughly akin in sound to firing a musket.) Maggie was sitting in the middle of the backyard, barking at the sky. I believe that her enormous ears picked up the bark of a dog in Kansas City or she was simply relaying messages back to the home planet. That message, by the way, was "Mission complete. Master still awake."
Hopefully, Maggie will get over her little habit soon, and I’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep. I hope’s it’s soon, because the folks at work really want me to begin wearing pants again.