I am my parents child.
My parents have massively different sleep habits and requirements. While my mom requires lots of sleep and tends to have a relatively early bedtime, my father has had various arguments with insomnia throughout his life and frequently gets up ridiculously early, yet still remains fully functional.
I say I am my parents child because like my Dad, I don't require THAT much sleep. 7 hrs is ideal. 6 hrs is OK. But, like my mom, I do NEED it. If I don't get a full night of sleep, lets say 6 hrs, I become ridiculously nonfunctional.
Wednesday night we went to trivia. We got home around 10:15pm and took River out of the crate. As expected, even after a late night walk she was not quite ready to settle down for the night, even though Aaron and I were. The result was that I was up half the night - stepped on by the puppy, keeping puppy from playing with the cat door, keeping puppy from chewing thing she shouldn't, trying to get puppy to lie down. I am a bit ridiculously patient with her, I really should just crate her on such evenings, but I feel bad doing that when its our fault that she has extra energy. Anyways, I did not get much sleep, and not much continuous sleep.
When I woke up in the morning I did not feel that grumpy or that tired, but within a few hours my minor sleep deprevation would raise its ugly head. By 11:00am at work I wanted desperately to go home sick, to just walk out, because of some minor things going wrong that would normally not phase me. I took lunch early and struggled through the rest of the day, arriving home ready to collapse in a heap and not deal with anything else. My poor judgement continued after work. I proceeded to take the dogs to the park, as planned. When there, River had one of her incedents (resource guarding), and in another show of poor judgement I did not immediately remove her. The result was a dog fight. Both dogs actually in the fight were fine once we got them seperated, but someone, a third dog that I did not even notice near the fight got bit in the ear? I don't know if this third dog stuck her head into the middle of it when I did not notice or what. I of course left the dog park at this point, even more distressed, and of course River cannot go back to the dog park, at least not that dog park where she has clearly shown the resources are an issue. I may still take her to the swimming dog park where she has never shown any resource guarding issues (the resource she guards at the closer dog park is the water bowl, which is not an issue when there is an entire lake there...) We will see. I also hope to (1) get river into doggy daycare on Wednesday's where they will help work on her behavior issues and help burn off extra energy and (2) start taking her to my cousin's house who has a fenced yard and lots of dogs so perhaps we can specifically work on the water guarding thing in a more controlled environment.
It took me a long time to calm down after the dog park. On a normal evening I would be pissed (mostly at myself), but would get over it quickly and move on, but I was so overly tired that I just totally over-reacted and broke down over it. It was a mess. I was a mess.
When I did straighten myself out I continued my evening as planned. I went to the library and picked up a new audiobook (A Great and Terrible Beauty), I called my friend T who I had not seen in ages to see what was up with him and if he wanted to do something, and I went to the fabric store and got supplies for the next three blankets I am making for my two helpers and coworkers. Back at home we took the dogs for another late walk (which is sort of becoming habit, a good habit I think as it gets both us and the dogs moving), and headed to bed very early. River snuggled up and slept. I slept. I feel much more well rested today, and hopefully today goes much better. So far, its looking good.
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