Tag Archives: sleep

April 19, 2015 · 9:22 pm

When You Lie Down With Dogs…

When I fantasize about taking a nap, I like to picture my favorite furry friend, or three, with me. They are cozy and cuddly with a touch of lazy, so they would seem to be perfect partners in sleep.

But, I’ve found that when trying to snuggle up with my pups, naps are anything but relaxing.

I love sleep. I always have. My mom said I used to put myself down for a nap until I was five. Now that I have two very active children, naps are pretty much nonexistent.

When You Lie Down With Dogs | Ponies and Martinis

Tiny. Doesn’t she look like a great sleep partner? It’s all lies!

But, every once in a great while, at the time of a great solstice, when the planets are in harmony, and I perform an intricate dance ritual, I get to take a nap.

Oh, it’s glorious.

I approach my bed reverently, and slipping in between the sheets, I rest my head upon a soft cottony cloud, releasing a sigh of pure happiness.

Then, I hear it. A persistent scratch at the bedroom door. It swings open and seconds later I feel the weight of three small dogs as they leap on my bed.

You’d think they’d settle down and enjoy a little cuddle, because my dogs are magnetically attracted to anyone in repose. You would be wrong.

First, Tiny rucks up the covers, making a little bed for herself. Drawing them toward her chest, kicking them back, she twirls around and flops into a tight ball.

Closing my eyes… I drift off… and…. *slurp* *slurp* *slurp.* Twilight, my filth-hating canine, cannot stand the stench emanating from Sparkles’ ears and commences a thorough scrub of her floppy sound receptacles. While I appreciate her dedication to cleanliness, I really just want to take a nap.

Tiny doesn’t want to miss any of the licking action, so she sneaks her way up to my arm and licks my armpit. Shoving her away, I roll over and cover myself with the blankets. Nudging at the covers, the little ninja slips in and starts to lick my face. To thwart her, I throw a pillow over my head. I can’t breathe, but I am going to nap anyway, dammit.

Slowly suffocating, but still napping, I feel something slamming against my thighs and I hear the soft warbles of play growling. Seriously? Chewbacca, aka Sparkles, wants to fight. I am about to throw down if I can’t have a nap, but I don’t think that is what Sparkles had in mind.

I growl back at Sparkles and she settles down. The nap has to happen now, right? No.

Something has drawn their attention, and the wee devils for whom I have boundless love begin to bark. Is it a leaf? Perhaps a squirrel has trespassed in our backyard. Or, maybe a mouse living in my wall farted, disturbing them. Who knows. I really don’t care. I am losing precious seconds of somnolence.

Giving them my best Mom glare, they FINALLY settle down and fall asleep. I join them, slipping languidly into the most spectacular sleep. Gliding through my dreams, I find myself on a desert island, feeling the hot sun on my face. I wake in a sweat and wonder what happened.

The source of the inferno is obvious. I am covered by a blanket made out of dogs, warming my entire body more effectively than any electric blanket ever could. While I appreciate the love, I am not a fan of boob sweat, and these dogs are making me sweat from my boobs, armpits and ladyland unmentionables.

Shucking off my canine companions, I stretch and bask in the afterglow. Licks, barks, sweat and all, I HAD A NAP. Awww yeah.

10 Comments

Filed under Martini Madness

Tagged as dogs, parenting, pets, sleep

October 16, 2014 · 1:41 pm

Dreaming of Becoming a Dog

I have been sitting on a couch, staring at this blank screen, trying to come up with something to write. My ever faithful companions, Tiny, Twilight, and Sparkles are right by my side supporting me, but not doing a very good job of suggesting writing topics.

Or, maybe they are a font of information and I am just too ignorant to understand them.

As Twilight drapes herself on my shoulders, Tiny nibbles on a bone by my knees, and Sparkles cleans the ears of her sisters, I start to feel a little jealous. Seriously, how great would it be to live like a dog?

The three amigos

When you’re a dog, you sleep as much as you want. Tired? Take a nap. Bored? Take a nap. It’s Tuesday at 2 PM? Take a nap. I LOVE naps. Even when I was little, and most kids were giving up the afternoon siesta, I held on to mine with a death grip. I have no idea why my kids give up theirs so quickly. You’d think if they had even an ounce of my great respect for slumber, they would still be napping and sleeping in later than 7 AM.

People cuddle you and rub your belly. The little dog, Tiny, will stop what she’s doing, flop on her back, and roll around like a worm on concrete until you scratch her tummy. When you do, her eyes close and that tiny pink tongue of hers slowly works its way in and out of her mouth. That is pure joy. Now, I don’t know if I want people rubbing my belly, but I love a good back rub. When someone works out the knots in my shoulders, I am riding a cloud of bliss straight to Happy Town. I don’t stick my tongue out… well, maybe I do. I really don’t know.

No matter what you do, people will forgive you. My pups have demolished shoes, ingested at least a 64-pack of crayons, released all manner of stinky things from both ends of their body in my home and still I love them. The most I say to them is, “Puppies! Bad dogs!” Imagine if you could run through someone’s house, break whatever you wanted and pee on their living room floor, and all they would say to you is, “No, thank you.” You would be able to work through all manner of things. Your boss makes you mad? Poop on his desk. What can he do? Swat your nose with a newspaper? Yeah, it’s good to be a dog.

You can poop and someone else cleans it up. My dogs poop all over the yard, be it rainbows, rope, or just straight up feces, and I clean it up without fail. Every week, I fill up a plastic bag full of doggie droppings. As a side note, were you aware that if you leave poop outside, it gets moldy? Yup. Moldy poop. And I pick it up. I also scrub toilets, spritz Lysol on all the pee my son deposits outside of the toilet, flushes everything my daughter leaves behind and never complain. Okay, there’s a little complaining. But wouldn’t it be awesome if I pooped and someone else cleaned it up? Someone else had to scoop, spray, and flush? I’d be living the dream if that happened.

So, you see, the dog life is pretty sweet. One day, I’d like to live like a dog. Maybe not the pooping outside part. I mean, I can poop in the toilet and still have someone else clean it up, right? Is that acceptable in faux dog land? Well, even if it isn’t, I think I could be convinced to do otherwise if I get time for napping and back rubs.

1 Comment

Filed under Partying with the Ponies

Tagged as dogs, laziness, sleep

February 9, 2014 · 5:14 pm

Did I Really Just Say That?

There was so much that I did not expect when I became a parent; the mind-numbing exhaustion, wearing my child’s blowouts, and the things I would end up saying to my offspring. There is great joy in the stereotypical, “Because I said so,” or, “You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit,” but then there are these choice nuggets:

No, I will not wipe your butt. You’re 7. Which probably leads to…
Please don’t wipe your poop on the wall. I mean, seriously. How messy can they get when wiping up? And how, after using a half a roll of toilet paper, do they still manage to get it all over their hands? And why do they think their poop hands should touch the wall? There is so much I just don’t understand.
I don’t care how nicely you ask, you cannot have a Ring Pop for breakfast. My kids somehow think that if they put “please” in their request that I will acquiesce. Then, they are sent into hysterics when it doesn’t work. “But, you said to ask nicely! I did ask nicely! YOU LIED! I’m never going to ask nicely again. I’m going to eat this Ring Pop anyway! As soon as I can get it open!” Tears, rolling around on the floor, and leg kicks ensue.
Why is there a used pull-up in the middle of your room? My daughter still uses a pull-up at night, because she has a bladder the size of, well, a small child’s bladder. I don’t care about pull-up use, as long as it doesn’t extend into the teen years, but what I do mind is going into her room after a long day and finding a sodden pull-up or two in the middle of her floor. Why doesn’t she throw it out? Does she like the smell of rotting urine in her room? Is it like fresh napalm for her? I mean, I don’t leave my feminine products lying about after I’m done with them. Because that would be DISGUSTING. I might lose my mind if, as a teen, she does the same thing with pads that she does with her pull-ups. I might even get nostalgic for the days when it was just a pull-up I found.
Yeah, well, you smell like rat-patooties. I am ashamed to admit this, but I have been known to sink to my kids’ level when I am at the end of my rope. I would love to be the perfect parent who always takes the high road and is so awesomesauce that they never even get into a fight with their child because they and their child are so well behaved, fighting is not in their lexicon. Since our family is on the opposite spectrum, I end up saying things like “rat-patooties” and, “no… you are!” We’re all 5 in this house.
You have lost TV in the morning, TV in the car, and when you get out of school. This is something that sticks out, not for the words themselves, but because I said them while trying unsuccessfully to get my daughter to bed. I start by offering her rewards to stay in bed, like watching Sheriff Callie in the morning or snuggling when she wakes up. Then, after about the third time, the punishments get doled out. I try not to take too much away at one time because I’ll run out of bargaining chips pretty quickly. There are nights when I do run out and have to make things up, like, “Your grandparents won’t pick you up from school now.” They weren’t planning on it, but dammit, I don’t know what else to say. It’s either that or, “Go the f to sleep!” in my best Samuel L. Jackson voice. I like to think I made the right choice in that situation.
Who pooped in the hall and ate it? Oh, wait. That’s something I say to the dogs. Nevermind.

While I’m glad I haven’t had to resort to the violent, old-school chestnuts such as, “I’ll give you something to cry about” or, “If I have to come up there….” I still wonder on a daily basis, what the hell am I saying? Is this normal? Am I raising some seriously screwed up kids? I guess as long as I don’t have to ask the kids if they ate their own poop, things can’t be too bad, right?