The other night — or, rather, early morning — I wrapped up my news-reading and blog-writing for the day, and happily crawled into bed, blissfully sleepy and ready to journey off into one or more of my notoriously weird dreams.

Four hours later, I was still lying there, staring alternately at the ceiling, the clock, and the insides of my eyelids, and mentally counting everything imaginable (including sheep) in an effort to fall asleep. But slumber continued to elude me.

I wasn’t ill; I wasn’t feeling achy; my feet weren’t twitching with that restless leg thing. But my mind wouldn’t shut down. Between thoughts of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, brush fires in nearby South and North Carolina, the price of Tylenol, and Elon Musk racking up another billion bucks from his government contracts . . . well, there was barely time to count more than 20 or 30 of anything.

And then I realized it might have been that half-pint of coffee ice cream I devoured around 10:00 p.m. That stuff does have caffeine, you know. Brilliant!

Finally, around 6:30 a.m., I got out of bed to answer that irresistible early-morning call of nature, and settled down again to give sleep one more try. That was when the dog started barking. And kept barking . . . and barking some more. It wasn’t her “someone’s trying to break into the house” bark; it was more like “there’s a deer in the back yard and I want to go out and play.”

Well, the rest of the family — and most of the neighborhood — needed to finish their night’s sleep before going off to work, so I finally decided to get up to convince the dog to shut her damned yap.

And at 7:00 that morning — after exactly zero shuteye — there I was, in the den, giving Dixie her first full-body massage of the day.

Yes, you read that correctly: I give dog massages. And apparently very good ones, because at least twice a day, she’s in here, staring at me without ever blinking, compelling me to put down whatever I’m doing and give her a “scratch” (that’s the word she knows). And when I finally can’t concentrate any longer . . . well, you try it with a pair of big, sad, brown eyes fixed on your face . . . she smiles knowingly, moves closer, and proudly turns around and backs up to me until I am looking smack-dab at her hind end. Because just above her tail and on both hips is where she is apparently the most itchy.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. There’s the rest of her long back, her belly, the shoulders, back of the neck, top of the head, cheeks, and ears to be treated to my soothing ministrations. It has occurred to me that, with all of the dogs in this neighborhood, I could turn this into a business and make a small fortune — that morning’s massage was worth a good $100, at least.

Anyway, my eyelids had finally begun to droop. So I gave her the three pats on her rump that signal I’m finished rubbing and scratching for now, and she got up and walked out . . . turning, just as she reached the doorway, to give me her “thank you” look. And I took myself — pajamas now amply strewn with dog hair — back to bed, where I finally, miraculously, managed to score four and a half hours of sleep and no fewer than three bizarre dreams.

My final thought before drifting off that morning was that I must remember to warn the family to look out for deer poop in the back yard.

And that, dear reader, is half a day in the life of this blogger. Is it any wonder I sometimes spend the other half doing this . . . ?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
3/25/25