Parental Controls

Dear Goddamned Beagle,

I have concerns.

When we go to bed at night, me under my covers, you leaning against my leg and cocooned within your grade-A Costco faux fleece personal sleeping burrito, I trust that we will both halt all activities until morning.

Sure, sometimes I get up to make a bathroom run, and sometimes you’ll overheat and jump down for a drink of water from your bedroom water bowl. But for the most part, we stay where we are and pass the night away together in slumber, interrupted only occasionally by you snoring loudly enough to wake us and anyone within a hundred-foot perimeter.

You are epically hard to get up, Beagz. Each morning, I wake up around 6:00, but I’ve learned to take work up with me at night to do in the morning from bed as you’re simply impossible for me to rouse until at least 7:30. Even then I either have to carry you downstairs, something you clearly resent, or spend a good ten minutes “gentling” you awake. This requires unwrapping you from your blanket (but not too quickly as the jarring cold of the ambient room temperature compared to your IBT (internal burrito temperature) is jarring and causes you distress, then calling your name softly, then ever-more loudly until I get a response from you. Then you yawn, give a small stretch, yawn again, and often fall back to sleep. Eventually, you’ll wake up enough to combat crawl across the bed in a better stretch until you get to me, at which time I lift you down because you’re too tired to just jump as you normally do. Jumping is an awake beagle activity per your rules.

Given all of this, why have I found you three times with the television remote next to your head? I like to fall asleep to a good murder show as much as the next guy, but the sleep timer I set for us ensures that the TV turns off each night when we nod off, a lesson I learned the second night I awoke from a strange dream to Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents talking about their son on a late-night recorded interview. I’m concerned you may be experiencing sleep issues I’m unaware of, bringing you to the late-night airwaves of Forensic Files, kitchen gadgets you never knew you needed, and irritation at the “We Buy Ugly Houses” add where the dad asks, “Please pass the pudding” of the mom, and she un-velcros the plate and passes him jello. It’s jello, for god’s sake. Who would call that pudding? That’ll rob you of an hour of sleep right there.

I’ve avoided looking at the “recently viewed” history on the TV. There are some things I just don’t want to know, and that you have a QVC shopping or Beagle Porn habit are high on that list. I simply ask that you not run up my cable bill renting or buying obscure art films and entire seasons of Portlandia or Gilmore Girls. Sometimes you just have to let a show go, Beagle.

Love,
Your Person

 

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