In a big DUH moment last night I realized why for the past few weeks I’ve been taking two hours to fall asleep and sleeping like crap: we removed the air conditioner. It’s too quiet. Or, rather, it’s not only so quiet that my ears are buzzing, but every little breath that my husband makes behind me sounds ten times louder. I can’t friggin sleep.

Apparently I need a white noise machine. I also need an air purifier, so maybe I’ll just get a noisy purifier and kill two birds with one stone.

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My husband has a dog that I don’t really get along with. This morning when I get out bed I saw him laying on the floor and, for whatever reason, it just struck me. I knelt down and gave him a hug. You could see the look in his eyes go from wariness to confusion to happiness. He leaned over to lick my hand, and sighed happily as I scratched his neck and hugged him again.

It struck me then what a terrible bitch I have been to my furkids the last year. I was really tired when I was pregnant, so I didn’t spend much time with them. But at least when I was pregnant and tired I wasn’t mean. Since Devin died, I have to say, my patience with them all is at about nil. I just get so frustrated with all of them. I don’t want to hear them make noise, I’m tired of picking up things they knock all over, I’m tired of vacuuming daily to keep up on the fur. I don’t want to play. Quite frankly I just want them to go away.

And it wrenches me inside. This is not who I am. I vowed to do better for them than this. They deserve better. I don’t know how to get past this irritation level, but I need to start making it up to them. I need to spend more time with them.

Last night my little dog jumped up on the bed and I started playing with her. When she realized I was playing it was like she started glowing, the grin on her face was huge. When she’s happy she sparkles anyways, but you could just see the joy radiating from her as she mock-growled and smacked at my hand, dancing in place with her tail wagging furiously. I laughed so hard at her antics – real, deep belly laughs that I haven’t heard in a while from myself. It was brief, quickly over, but it’s there.

This evening when I got home both dogs whined as they pressed against me, so happy I was home. Den’s dog wantered off and I thought at first he had lost interest and decided to go back to sleep. But he went into his crate, then turned and came back out… with a toy. He brought me a present. It made me want to cry.

If we had even half the capability of forgiveness that they did, we would be saints.