Someone could get hurt January 11, 2007

I tend to stay up fairly late.  Much too late most days.  This possibly stems from my childhood, when I was made to go to bed at 8:00 p.m. each night – even in the summer, while the sun was still up, the ice cream truck was still roaming the neighborhood wailing, “It’s a Small World After All”, & all of my friends, who were allowed to play outside until the streetlights came on (how the rest of the parenting world gauged appropriate times to be in!), were taunting me at my window. Anyway.  It’s just that I simply refuse to be at the office, longer than I’m home (awake).   So then, if I get home at 5:30 then I need to be up until at least 1:30 I’m thinking.  I don’t care if I am sitting straight up on the couch, incorporating, ‘Roseanne’ and ‘America’s Next Top Model’, into my dreams. 

So Maddie, right?  She’s my precious 6 year old.  At night I put her to bed at 9:00, thinking she’ll be exhausted enough from a taxing day in 1^st grade to sleep until her next birthday. But, without fail, at some unspecified time between my falling asleep on the couch and 1:20 a.m., Maddie has made her way to our bed & is asleep on my side (it’s open – I’m on the couch). Something inevitably (usually being cold or having to go to the bathroom) will stir me enough to roll to the floor, realize that I’m not a contestant who’s “still in the running to becoming America’s next top model”, grapple for the remote, drag myself from the couch, crawl up the stairs, brush my teeth & wash my face & check on the girls so I can head to bed.  Maddie’s missing.  Crap.  It occurs to me to head back down to the couch or just crawl into her bed. I head up anyway, I need my alarm.

I carefully maneuver the stairs & through the room so as not to wake Harold (who would likely not hear prowlers who’d tripped our car alarms while they were taking our barn door off one board at a time by banging their heads to Limp Bizkit, yet if I catch a toenail on the carpeting, creating a soft, *ping*, he’d bolt straight up in the bed going, “Whaaaaaa?!  Whooooo?!  Where!?” (boy, could I tell some stories!)  I try to avoid this.  So I slide into the 4-inch free-edge between Maddie & the drop off to the floor.  I try to slide a leg across the bed but Kalabou (9 yr. old Australian Shepherd mix) is at Harold’s feet (which are also encroaching on MY side of the bed).  Here comes Max (9 yr. old Boston Terrier) who insists on sleeping under the covers, spooning my leg (because I don’t need more than 4-inches of space).  I listened to Harold & Max snore & Maddie whimper, mutter, twitch & squirm.  Unceasingly.  It’s unbearable. I’m being tortured: 

This can go on for hours. Hours. And more hours. As many hours as there are between 1:30 and 7:30 AM, which doesn’t seem like many right now, but there in the dark it seems like all of the hours that ever were, a collection of time so vast that I could have witnessed the Colorado River carve out the Grand Canyon, one layer of dirt at a time.

Sometimes I give up on the idea that I will ever sleep again; other times I muster the strength (I draw on the adrenalin I’ve created by fuming!) to get out of bed & carry Maddie, slung over my shoulder, back down the precarious attic steps back to her bed.  Back in the bed, Max assumes the position and I say my prayers – lulling myself, at last, into a peaceful sleep.

BEEEPP!  BEEEPP!  BEEEPP! (alarm #1)

DeeeeDeeeDeeeDeeeDeee!  DeeeeDeeeDeeeDeeeDeee!   (alarm #2)

“Brass Monkey, that funky monkey …!” (alarm #3)

Eyes fly open.

“Oh, hey honey … you’re still awake?”

“Uh-huh, yeah.”

“You better get to sleep, you’ll never want to get up.”