I’m showing up this morning, dressed but I’ve dispensed with brushing the hair and teeth. I’m straight into the Chai.  I’m a little sleep deprived.

The trouble with our flight booking and prepping Sheba for boarding got to me last night. Mostly it was Sheba’s whimpering and whelping.  We’re getting her re-acquainted with the crate as the boarder keeps the dogs in their crates at night and when she’s not at home. Sheba had been crate trained as a puppy and spent time in one when I was at work.

I didn’t think there would be trouble re-introducing it.  But she is terribly spoiled. She had slowly inched her way out of the crate and into cornered off spaces.  Now she has the run of the house and sleeps in our room and wherever she pleases.  She has been re-acquainted with the crate and will go into it for her meals and at night.  But during the night she starts whimpering, escalating into little yelps.  She knows how to get to me.  I’ve been letting her out after a couple of hours the last 2 nights.

I’m hoping she is just testing us and will behave better at the boarding place.  I’m trusting that everything will work out.  I’ve done the best I could getting things ready.  Now I have to trust and let go.

I’m doing well, despite feeling like hell.  It’s the sleep or no sleep the last couple of nights. And to think I’ve lived like this for over 30 years as a nurse.  I slept 4-5 hours a working- day/night for all those years.  I see clearly now the why(s) of my problems.

You will have to excuse the grammatical errors and the disjointedness of my thoughts.  I am not operating on full cylinders.  I have trouble with tenses at the best of times.  I am happy that I can still tap out some words and thoughts this morning.  It is not easy but it is also not difficult.  I put my fingers on the keyboard and look at that one-inch picture frame in my mind.  The words come  out in little stuttering trickles at first.  As my mind clears, the sentences come.  I have not experienced a flood or deluge yet.

That’s all I ask for this morning – a trickle, a beginning, a foot into that space of serenity beneath Buddha’s Bodhi tree.  And I’m here, in that space.  I have a beginning into the day.