Good Morning

4.15am. I wake from a dream. I lie in bed for a moment, just enjoying the warmth of the bedclothes, they feel extra luxurious as I lay there, as my consciousness catches up with the day.

I dreamed I’d been blowing leaves out of the bottom of a car with a leaf blower, kind of out of the very underneath of a car. The leaves were shooting out at right angles to the car in a constant spray of leaves travelling so fast they almost looked like lasers, but they were leaves being shot out constantly at speed.

I don’t know what that means?

I don't want to get out of bed, but I need a wee now that I am awake.

There was more to the dream which I try to remember, but it doesn’t come. No, it's gone.

I go for a wee, with my phone, as I have taken to writing my dreams down if I get up in the middle of the night. It has been getting cold, and I am sure I can feel a draft as I stand on the landing in my undies, so I go down to the front door with the light switched on on my phone – ever since I stood on a half eaten rat in the dark, it’s entrails squishing between my toes, I’ve used my phone light, otherwise, I can see well in the dark, always have been able to – and put the sausage over the large gap we unfortunately have under our front door through which the cold wind whistles in. Coming back upstairs, as I flash my phone light along the hallway carpet, there is, indeed, a half eaten rat on the carpet – Milo’s favourite dining room for eating rats he has caught, the front hallway. It could be worse, I always tell myself, I had a friend once whose cat would eat the things it had caught in the middle of their bed.

So, I went to the kitchen to get a plastic bag in which to put what remained of the rat. Always the face part and the body from the neck back remains, Milo seems to like the section between the face and the body, I guess you would call that the neck. That seems to be the preferred cut of the rat.

The lounge room lights are on, I hesitate in case Charlie is up for some reason and I am just in my jocks, stupid really. The lounge room is empty, I wonder if we left them on, which I doubt as both Sam and I are, shall we say, careful with money. I turn the lights off. (We have smart globes so all of our lamps work from our phones and sometimes they will turn off and then just come back on again, occasionally)

I go to the kitchen, with the light of my phone, to get a plastic bag and the pan and shovel. The kitchen pan and shovel isn’t in the bottom of the pantry where it should be. Grrr. I throw all the reusable shopping bags out of the bottom of the pantry into the kitchen in my hunt but still no pan and shovel appears. “Damn it.”

I momentary wonder if I could pick the rat carcass up by the tail. I know I should be able to, but all I could think is Euw!

So, I go to get the garden pan and shovel. 

I reach for the back door key from its hiding spot and I drop my phone on the carpet and it lands face down extinguishing the light. I’m good in the dark however, so I retrieve the key from where we hide it, but I drop it also onto the carpet. So then, I am on my hands and knees feeling around for my phone, which I find. I shine my phone light around and I find the key.

I open the back door and step out. I reach for the garden pan and shovel over the back of Buddy’s now disused kennel and that pan and shovel is also not where it should be. Duh!

I switch off the light on my phone, so my eyes adjust to the dark, as I said, I have really good night vision. So, it is 4.30am and I am in my undies, standing on my tiptoes, so my feet are connecting with less cold paving as is necessary, starting to feel the cold, wondering where two pans and shovels may now be, so I can clean up a dead rat, so I can head back to the bathroom, have a wee, and then hop back into my warm bed.

This is not where I expected to be 15 minutes ago, I think to myself. Brrrr.

Then it comes to me, I tossed the pan and shovel under the wicker chair, now to the right of me, in a rather cavalier fashion the last time I used it. I remember thinking, what the hell. I lean down and pick it up thinking, what the hell indeed.

I bag the rat. I leave it against the hallway wall thinking I will dispose of that in the morning.

I have a wee.

I get back to bed.

My eye is itchy. Does that mean a change of weather, I think to myself?

6.45am. I wake up from a dream. I sit up because I instantly think about going to the bakery and buying bread, but it is cold and dark, so I lay back down for a minute and the dream is gone. I try to recall it, but it is gone. It was some thing about pine trees and rubber bands. No, its gone.

I am awake, I am probably not going back to sleep again now no matter how much I think I am, I might as well get up and go and get the bread while it is just the guy there, as he gives it to me cheaper than when his wife is there.

So, I get up, get dressed and go to leave the bedroom when Bruno joins me, his claws making clip clop noises – scritch scratch noises? – on the floorboards in the dark. He shakes as soon as he is on the landing, he always shakes first thing on the landing. We head downstairs. I wait for him to sniff the bagged rat, but the plastic bag is on the opposite side of the hallway to where I left it and it is empty, clever Milo, I think. He’s come back and thought, what the hell! And he has finished his meal. All of it. Nothing of the rat is left. He has made two smallish holes in the bag and he has eaten the rat inside the bag. Cats.

Bruno goes out the back for a wee.

I head over to the bakery for bread. It is still dark and the ground is wet from rain. Summer is over, I think. The baker guy is chatty as always. 

“The only way I’d be better is if I won TattsLotto,” he says. “And we all know what the chances of that are.”

I fumble with my coins, in my pre-coffee dither as to how much he charges me for the bread.

“Oh well, you can always live in hope,” I say. I give him the coins.

“That is the problem with society today, too many people live on hope.”

I think I haven’t given him the right amount, I go to fish out another dollar, but he throws it in the money draw.

But for some people, hope is all they have got, I think.

“You have a nice weekend.”

Stop fumbling for the other dollar. Christian, he has accepted what you gave him. “Um… oh, yes, you have a nice weekend too.”

I head home with my cheap bread, pleased with myself? I don’t know, should I have said, I haven’t given you enough and then offered him the rest of the money? Should I have done that? I always go there, so I am a regular customer so what does it matter? Or, is that all the more reason to give him the correct money? Oh, I don’t know, I haven’t had coffee and my brain isn’t working. (We love the excuse, now don’t we) These are the things I think in the dark and the cold while I am concentrating on not standing in any puddles from the rain from last night in my crocs and socks.

7.15am. I make coffee. I sit on the couch with my laptop. Bruno climbs up on the couch next to me. It was just starting to get light, which I always think is the most magical part of the day, just when it is coming alive.