Wet Pillow

I awoke at 3 a.m. to the sound of Caillou barking. He's the youngest dog in the pack and the best watch dog on the hill. He sleeps with his head sticking through the doggie door listening and watching. I've gotten up for water in the past, and looked out the garden door in the back to see him pacing the fence line listening, and watching. 

When he barks, there's usually something going on outside. The moon was almost full this morning and when I looked outside toward the road, I could see the shadow of someone walking slowly up the road the glowing ember of a cigarette bobbing along beside them like a lightening bug.

We live in a RURAL area and you don't often see "regular" people walking the roads at 3 a.m. When people do walk at that hour, I suspect they are up to no good.

That's one reason that most people around here don't keep their dogs fences. Most of my neighbors agree with me thinking that when you walk the road at that hour, you're begging to get mauled by a mutt. My neighbors own every kind of dog from shitzus to pitt bulls. One has a great dane that's almost big enough to look into my truck window when I drive by. He seems to be saying "move along buster, there's nothing to see here."

This morning I considered putting Astro out the front door to make things interesting for the stroller. The reason we built a fence in the first place was because he made a sport of menacing people walking up and down the roads late at night.  But I thought better of it, and so when the stroller walked out of sight, I laid back down hoping to fall asleep.

I should have stayed up because I tossed and turned until 5 a.m. It would have been much more productive for me to log onto my computer and catch up on reading the entries of my blog buddies.

After two hours of mental reruns, I finally forced myself to breath deeply and to dismiss random mental clips before the opening credits. Soon I was sleeping.

It's a mystery to me why some nights I sleep so soundly I slobber on my pillow, and other nights it's as if I'm expecting Charles Manson and his merry pranksters to show up at my house and carve their initials into our lifeless bodies with paring knives.

Maybe it's the moon. If it can move the tides, it's not that much of a stretch to think that it could affect our sleep patterns.

Anyhow, I hope tonight is better. I'd much rather wake up with a wet pillow.