sleep

Just a day in the life…

My alarm goes off at 4:45 this morning, but this was after a few hours of unsuccessful sleep. The disruptions came from my precious baby girl, Peyton, wanting to snuggle with me. As stated before, she loves to sleep sprawled across my neck, resting her chin on my face somewhere, normally my eye socket.

Last night, in an effort to get more sleep without her accosting me, I hid under the covers. Poor choice. I have learned that if you try to deny her, she will do everything in her power to achieve her goal. She bats and digs at the covers and proceed to bitch slap me with her fluffy little paw until she gets to her spot. Don’t get me wrong, I love cuddling her, she is so soft and warm, but her purring keeps me awake.

So back to 4:45…alarm goes off, I head to the kitchen to make protein pancakes for my 8 mile run I am about to embark on. I sit at the kitchen table, syrupy pancakes waiting for me, and start to think about how tired I am; I feel like I need an adrenaline needle to the heart to make it through this run.

Peyton, in typical form, jumps up on my lap to bless me with her presence as I eat my breakfast. She nestles in, but within moments decides she needs to stand up to readjust. Something I should note here about Peyton is that she is long-haired, and about 60% of her body mass comes from her tail. I could almost see this all happening in slow motion; she stands up, turns around, sways her tail in happy cat fashion, and bam…tail lands on my plate and sways back LOADED full of syrup.

“PEYTON ELIZABETH!” (yes, she has a middle name, after her God Mother, one of my best friends). I yell at her and grab her immediately before she has a chance to run off. I clutch her to my chest and we walk over to the sink. As soon as we get there, her whole body tenses up. She only weighs 6 pounds, and I’m pretty sure is a midget cat, but her back claws become the lethal weapons of a jungle cat when something she doesn’t like is happening.

The faucet turns on, and her body immediately starts to violently thrash. I’m holding her away from my body, dunking her into the stream of water in an attempt to protect my internal organs, as she flips and shrieks, and is all but audibly screaming, “Fuck You Mom!”.

Tail rinsed, I wrangle her back to my chest, still trying to calm her down, as I reach for the paper towels with my other hand, frantically trying to rip one off, while unsuccessfully unraveling half of the roll.

I dry off her tail, and set her free. You would have to know her, but she is a typical cat I guess, with a loving, but super bratty personality. She doesn’t run. She takes two steps, turns and looks at me as if to say, “if I could kill one person with my mind…”

I look at the clock, it’s 5:15…welp, now I’m awake. People have always said that God works in mysterious ways.

I was out the door a half hour later, and as I turned to shut it, the last image I had in my apartment was the icy cold glare of Peyton, being sure to let me know I was not yet forgiven for my actions.

Yup… totally worth the allergies and asthma.

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Some words of wisdom can be skipped

Yesterday, I had the unfortunate pleasure of going to the doctor’s office for a basic check-up and to get my allergy/asthma meds refilled.  I have year-round allergies, and am allergic to everything found in nature, animals and plants included, which really sucks for an outdoorsy, animal lover such as myself.  My asthma, while not exercising, is always set off by my allergies (just let me hang out at your house if you have a cat for while without my inhaler… I do an epic Darth Vader impression).

When the doctor asks me how everything is going and how my asthma is, I tell him the usual; I always use my inhaler before I workout and run, and generally right before I go to bed. This is always when the writing stops and he peers up at me over the rim of his glasses.  “If we look back at your test results,” he says, “you responded the strongest to Maple trees, mold, dogs, cats, and grass.  You have pets don’t you?”, I proudly respond with, “yes, a cat and a dog.”  I always stand firm on this, I have already broken up with 2 allergists for telling me to get rid of my cat…at the second one I replied with, “Sure, lady, kill your second born”…I don’t think so.  But my primary doctor knows to tread lightly on certain subjects; my weight and my pets in relation to my allergies/asthma.

He continues to educate me though. “Where most people with allergic reactions show a level of 60 or below, your levels are clear above 1500, so… you are pretty allergic”.  Levels of what, I am not sure, but I am smart enough to do the math in my head and realize quickly that 1500 is a heck of a lot higher than 60 (gotta love college).

“Do your pets sleep in your room or on your bed?”  I get a quick image in my head of me, sleeping diagonally across my bed, clutching what little covers I can out from under my 70 lb dog, who always wants to sleep right where my body needs to go.  Meanwhile, my cat not only sleeps with me, but across my neck, resting her chin in my eye-socket. 

“Sometimes,” I reply, not being proud enough of this explain to him my nightly ritual. 

“You might want to start shutting your bedroom door, even during the day, to keep them out of there.  It will really help.  What type of pillow do you use?”

Do I explain to him that, at 27, I sleep on a monkey pillow pet?  I am trying to formulate the argument in my head that it is SO soft and supportive, and he’s a monkey!  Thankfully he cuts off my train of thought of searching for an answer to give him, “Is it a down pillow?”…”No?”, said with no conviction….”It probably isn’t, down pillows are about $100.  You probably haven’t spent $100 on a pillow recently.”  Oh great… being poor is now a diagnosable, medical condition.  “I would recommend you get a hypo-allergetic pillow, that will help too.”

“Do they make a hypo-allergetic pillow pet?” I want to ask, but I don’t.  I know how to pick my battles.

20 minutes later, and loads of sound, adult, doctor recommended advice later, I headed home, where I dove head first into my pillow pet and proceeded to nap for an hour, cat on my head, dog at my feet.  Some sacrifices are just so worth it 🙂

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