Two of my most dearly held beliefs go thusly:
1) 5:30 a.m. is for sleeping
2) It is only acceptable to see 4:30 a.m. if you are rolling in after one hell of a night on the town. And frankly, while I did that pretty regularly in college and just after, I'm fairly certain I haven't been out that late since I hit 30. I've got stuff to do during the day. I need my sleep.

Which brings me to Seamus, who suddenly thinks sleep is for losers. I don't know what I've done to offend my little dog, but he's decided that we should start getting up between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. He starts with flipping his ears, knowing the noise will wake me. Then he breaks out the flop and sigh, followed by sticking his nose into anything he can find in the bedroom that will make a rattling noise. For the grand finale, he resorts to fussing and hopping. This is all interspersed with me grumbling "hush, Seamus, it's not time yet" and "no, go lie down and be quiet!" Kicking him out of the room doesn't work. He just runs downstairs, gets even more excited, and comes bounding back up to start shaking his ears again. And I thrash around and try to sleep until I can't take it anymore. "Fine!" I mutter irritably and stomp around the bedroom getting dressed as Seamus wriggles and squeaks in celebration. It's hard to stay grumpy when faced with such an ecstatic dancing beagle, but if he keeps this up, I'll manage.

At first I thought, ok, he's getting older, maybe he's having trouble going all night without well, going. So I tested adding a late night walk just before bedtime. He was so worked up about the change in routine that he hardly slept at all that night. And frankly, when we go outside, he's not desperate to take care of business. He just thinks it would be a really great idea for us to go outside, right now. There must be a dog in heat in the neighborhood somewhere. I hope there's a dog in heat somewhere, because at least that will pass. I can't take much more of this. On Wednesday, I took moldy bread for lunch, because I was so tired I didn't notice it was green. Yesterday I actually cooked myself some macaroni and cheese to take for lunch - hey, I was up with plenty of time to spare - and I was so out of it that I left it sitting on the counter.

Seamus thinks you should ignore the crazy human. He'd also like to know if you want to go outside.

Posted by Bad Penguin at April 17, 2009 9:46 AM