There is no need for me to ever set an alarm clock-- and not just because I don't have your typical nine-to-five job. Every morning, these days at eight-thirty on the dot, Madison wakes me up by licking inside my nose until I can't breathe and just have to get up in order to push him off of me. And on days when that doesn't work, he paws at my shoulder until I get up and let him outside.
It's not that he has to go to the bathroom-- no, he can do that in the house on a Wee Wee pad while still allowing me to sleep in-- but he has become accustomed to spending his mornings out on the patio, watching our neighbors walk by on their way to the garage so they can leave for work. He likes to pace up and down, surveying the situation, occasionally letting out a bark or low growl at another dog or a neighbor who doesn't bother to say a "Good morning, Madison!" or offer a chin scratch. He wants everyone to know he is on patrol.
This morning was no different, though I, exhausted from the festivities of last night, didn't make it outside faster than him to do my initial sweep of the patio for cigarette butts.
Allow me to explain: though I don't smoke, enough of my neighbors do that the butts tend to blow off adjacent patios and balconies and make a nice home on mine, once in awhile even burning a hole in the cloth of my lounge chairs.
Madison used to have a thing about cigarettes. He would make a bee-line for them whether they were stubbed left-overs rolling around on the ground or still lit and in someone's hand. I blame The Scribe-- a fellow writer I was seeing for a few months earlier this year. He'd never smoke around me because he knew how much I hate it, but there were many times when the smell of smoke would still linger on him.
Now, Madison has never met a guy friend of mine that he has not liked. I joke around that he's my gay son because of how he has reacted to some of them in the past. He loves people in general and will run straight to the door anytime he hears knocking or a new voice. When he found a professional athlete friend on the other side of the door (a guy who had just come from the pool and was walking around in just swim trunks with a towel slung over his shoulder), he literally stopped in his tracks, sat down in front of the guy, and stared up at him in what I like to call "loving awe." He then began to promptly follow that guy around for the rest of the day, even though the house was full of about a dozen other people and a barbecue of many, many of his favorite meats.
So needless to say, Mad got equally attached to The Scribe. I guess there's something to be said for a little boy needing male role models in his life. Mad would circle The Scribe's legs and jump up and off the ground until he acknowledged him with a scratch behind the ear or by allowing him to chew on his fingers for a few minutes. And that is where I believe Madison first got the taste for cigarettes.
I don't really know how Madison put two and two together, but during the few months that The Scribe and I were seeing each other, it was as if Mad was trying to be just like him by picking up the one quality I didn't like about the guy. If I let him, Madison would have eaten each and every single cigarette. After all, one time he ate a band-aid straight off a friend's leg.
But this morning, though there were two distinct butts left in plain sight on our outdoor bamboo rug, Madison marched right past them as if he did not even notice they were there. He plunked his little butt down on the lounge chair and gazed out over his terrain like the king as which he has come to be treated. He watched me, too, from the chair as I bent down and picked up the butts to toss into the trash. And he seemed to be smirking, as if maybe I had it wrong and this had been his plan all along. He was only pretending to pick up a bad habit so that I would worry about his influences and remove any that I thought were negative. Then he'd be the only man in my life again.
For the record, I did not stop seeing The Scribe because I thought he wasn't the positive male role model my son the dog might need. But if it makes Madison feel better, I'll let him think that was it. Because not-so secretly, I like it when it's just the two of us, too.
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