Relative Something

We got a little rain over night Wednesday and into early Thursday morning. It wasn’t heavy enough to rouse me from my slumber, even though we had the window open wide, but it was enough to create a constant drip, drip, drip from the roof. It was the dripping that disrupted my pleasant night’s sleep.

In my mostly unconscious mind that ardently intended to stay asleep, the sound triggered a memory of when my gutter would fill up with debris in the past. That problem was supposed to be solved. The second story eave just above our bedroom window is near the spot where the plugged gutter would begin to overflow and drip on the deck and furniture below. That sound was drummed into my procrastinating mind whenever it would rain during the period I continued to neglect the chore of risking life and limb to clean that back gutter. The way I finally solved that dilemma was to pay for the installation of gutter covers that guaranteed I would never need to clean my gutters again.

As I desperately tried to remain sleeping, my mind took the bait of that memory and began working over the disaster that appeared to have occurred which would allow my gutter to be dripping over the side, regardless the cover installed. If the system was plugged again, then the whole cover as solution turns out to be a waste. That would also mean I needed to either get up there to investigate and maybe remedy the situation, at significant risk, or convince the company that installed them to get back out here and live up to that guarantee. I don’t know which is the worse option.

By now I expect you are getting a feel for what kind of gentle, restful sleep I was enjoying in the pre-dawn hours yesterday morning. Those thoughts I was having morphed into some classic dream struggles where situations changed constantly and whatever it was I was trying to accomplish continually evaded my grasp.

When the alarm triggered to signal the end of my allotted slumber, I was prepared to start the day in a dreary gloom for the torture I’d been forced to endure with the drip, drip, …drip. That, and the frustrating dreaming which had launched off my concern over our gutter problem.

Cyndie spoke first. “That drip off the neighbor’s roof sure is irritating,” she moaned while trying to stretch toward the state of being awake.

The neighbor’s roof! Why didn’t I think of that!? Obviously, it was irritating, either way. But I spent a lot more negative energy over that drip than Cyndie did. At least the morning no longer appeared near as gloomy for me as it had initially.