Dog day morning

22 Apr 2008, 2pm

It likely goes back to the childhood tendency to resist bedtime because you don’t want to miss out on anything, but after a lifetime of thinking of sleep (or, more precisely, the effort of getting to sleep chemically unaided) as an enemy of sorts – a boring frustration to wage a war of resistance against – I’m now that guy who’ll willingly hit the sack at, say, nine, and get up at, say, five or six. Living rurally this is of course standard; people get cracking early because there’s work to be done, real work involving maybe the employment of machines and livestock, or the government of children, not sitting around all confused about why your left joins are borked or blathering on about your sleep habits.

The bonus of step-fatherhood, at least inasmuch as I’ve managed to wrangle my way into it, is never having to have gone through the years of constant sleep interruption brought on by infants. (I really don’t know how you people do that. I mean, I admire the skill and tenacity required, but find it difficult to envy: sleep anxiety or not, once you go under the last thing you want to do is stop.) When I arrived here the kids were just approaching tweenhood, now they’re away at school most of the time. Lovely when they’re here (well, ‘lovely’ factoring in every possible variation of the stupidly bothersome cliches of the worldwide alliance of teenaged girls rulebook) but when they’re not, meh, I’m going to need someone to explain the downside of this ‘empty nest syndrome’ to me in plain language. Plus I can sleep whenever I want.

No matter how early I get up, the landlord slash neighbour slash troublesome IT client’s lights will already be on. As a retired bureaucrat, he has no real labour to get to; most likely he’s doodling little hearts and teddy bears in his Nicolas Sarkozy notebook.

Anyway I’m pretty sure it’s not the quiet tranquility of the early morning that has caused this behaviour shift – quiet tranquility piles up like uncollected trash here in hicktown France. It’s not the GTD, cleared inbasket, mailbox zero efficiency that the extra time offers (though it is useful to get a head start violating the copyright of whatever interesting happened to be on television the night before throughout the commonwealth of english-speaking content provision, and, for better or worse, I suppose it’s had a lot to do with the return of this site). It’s not the beauty of sunrise, so much in favour with businessmen after that first heart attack. I’m hoping it’s enough to conclude that it’s learning, however late, to think of a day as connected in some way to what went on during the one previous, and what will on the one following, rather than treating a day, as I have for years and years, as something to pad with distractions and microscopic achievements until it’s time once more to wage war with sleep. I’m aiming to have some understanding of this time-as-continuum business when I grow up, but in the meantime Russian poetry has started making a lot more sense.

The dogs, amazingly, are approaching this new early-rising folderol with rather less nuance, reflecting not at all on anyone’s considerations of sleep and time. Their math is simple: light plus vertical people means dogs go out for walk then dogs eat full stop. They’re reasonably well-behaved – not Cesar Milan well-behaved, not dog borstal either – and the natural weimaraner tendency to own the room at all times has been lessened over the years, but Hugo before the morning walk, man. Imagine commanding a rolling tank to keep it down and hold on a minute before flattening that there house, fella.

Given that we prefer to take the boys out for their walk together, if I get up at, say, six, and Herself opts to sleep until, say, nine, the dog choices are as follows:

Leave both in the bedroom with Herself
This results in both dogs pacing, whining, and pressing the small of her back with cold wet noses in case she is unaware that, hello, the day has begun, but I get some nice quiet time downstairs to drink coffee and write bullshit like this.

Leave Oliver in the bedroom and bring Hugo downstairs
On his own, Hugo can be weirdly calm, even in advance of the walk. He’ll just sit at attention beside my desk, confusedly staring. Oliver, upstairs, will be pacing and whining, but to a smaller degree than if Hugo were there (they bring out the worst in each other). He’ll also climb up on the bed when I’m not around, the presumptuous bounder.

Leave Hugo in the bedroom and bring Oliver downstairs
This is not an option, as Hugo’s tendency to go jealously mental if there’s any possibility Oliver is having more fun than he will contribute, eventually, to the universe collapsing on itself.

Bring both dogs downstairs
This can work. Let the boys out for a quick drain in the back yard, then they just sort of hang, quietly anxious, in my office. I can usually shush the pacing and whining, but if it gets to be too much, the all-purpose timeout zone that is the cages in the room next door works a treat. So long as the occasional rustle of noise indicates I’m still nearby, they’re perfectly calm. However. If I leave my office for any length of time, for, say, ablutions or another cup of coffee: imagine the sound of a packed kennel just as a cat steps through the front door, and multiply by seven.

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