The Legacy of a Twenty-Pound Fur Ball

There is not much you can do when a twenty-pound fur ball decides it is time for you to get up.

I work long hours during the week at a very demanding job.  When my grown up son moved out of the house recently, I decided the rules regarding my weekend needed to change.  My life used to be driven by the demands of raising a child, but now I realized I was free to stay up as long as I wanted on Saturday, and could simply sleep in on Sunday.  Boy was I wrong.

Just this past weekend, I did what so many busy people do these days.  I spent most of Saturday running around like the Mad Hatter, dashing here and there, and trying to complete all the things on my “to do” list that I couldn’t cram into my already busy week.  By the time Saturday night came along, I was ready to just relax and catch up on some “me” time.  Six hours later, I’m deep into a romance novel and realize it’s now two a.m. Sunday morning; maybe I should be thinking about getting some rest.  No problem, my time is my own and I can just sleep in until noon because I’m a free agent.  Again, boy was I wrong.

All I can remember of my dream is that it involves a tall, dark, handsome man and a hot tub when a short, stumpy fur ball decides Mommy needs to wake up now.  If at first a gentle paw tap to the shoulder doesn’t work, then maybe claws to the head will do the trick.  I sleepily swat the offending paw out of the way and try to recapture the dream.  Next comes the fur ball pushing its way under my covers to crouch next to me, capturing one of my hands between it’s paws and proceeds to chew on a knuckle.  Startled, I push the fur ball away and roll onto my back, hopping back into that dreamy hot tub before the water gets cold.  By now, Tommy has lost all patience with me, and decides to crawl his twenty-pound body onto my chest and breathe his foul feline breath into my face until I am now fully awake.  Satisfied that I have no chance of going back to sleep, the fur ball slowly climbs off me and drops to the floor in search of a cozy chair to sleep in.

If I weren’t so tired from a lack of sleep I would laugh.  Twenty years of devoting my waking hours to raising my son showed me where I stand in the pecking order around my house.  His needs came first and I gladly took second place as most mothers always do.  Once my son left, however, I never considered that the first place throne would not pass to me.  Tommy knows his place in my household hierarchy…and apparently, I now know mine.