Sweet Dreams

Here is a multiple choice problem. It is the story of a foolish woman who wakes up every morning with a very sore back. It is hard to explain why this woman is so foolish. Every night she lies down with a small black-and-tan Chihuahua puppy tucked up under her arm underneath the covers. Then on top of the covers she has two cats that curl up against her. One settles in the hollow formed by her legs, and the other usually sleeps on top of a leg. The cats weigh at least 12 pounds each. She and her husband touch fingers across the pillows and lean over to kiss, crushing the little dog as they do so, then they lie recumbent wating for sleep.

She is usually comfortable for the first 15 minutes, but then her muscles start to tense and quiver so she shifts a little bit, bending the other leg and straightening the one that was bent before. This happens 2 or 3 times and then she probably falls asleep. Sometime in the middle of the night she becomes very hot, because the small dog is like a never-cooling hot water bottle and builds up a radiance in the hollow of her arm. She says to herself, like a mantra, “happiness is a warm puppy,” and wonders if Charles Schultz ever knew the true meaning of his words. They have much more depth to them when the warm puppy is lying next to your body.

The cats feel like dead weights. She cannot move her legs without disturbing them and she wishes they would go sleep elsewhere. However one of them is prone to peeing on the sofa when treated disagreeably and might go do so if she pushes it away. She drifts back to sleep several hours later, generally just before dawn.

In the morning when she wakes up, she wonders if she will be able to get out of bed or whether her back has finally broken. Some days it is worse than others, and she tries to remember what it was like long ago when no one slept on top of her. Although her back didn't hurt then, she realizes that there has hardly ever been a time when some animal wasn’t sleeping beside her. She sighs and wishes she knew what to do.

Do you think her problem is due to:

1. advancing age
2. couch potato lifestyle
3. needing a different bed
4. too many animals
5. not enough calcium in her diet
6. Charles Schultz demise
7. all of the above