Early to rise makes for a tiring day
As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m allergic to
morning.
I have never been one of those people who bounds out of bed
first thing in the morning with a spring in my step and a smile on
my face. It’s more like
”
Morn of the Living Dead.
”
Waking up is a long and drawn-out process for me that involves
slapping myself vigorously about the face, taking a long hot
shower, and ingesting several cups of strong coffee, preferably
delivered intravenously.
Early to rise makes for a tiring day
As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m allergic to morning.
I have never been one of those people who bounds out of bed first thing in the morning with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. It’s more like “Morn of the Living Dead.”
Waking up is a long and drawn-out process for me that involves slapping myself vigorously about the face, taking a long hot shower, and ingesting several cups of strong coffee, preferably delivered intravenously.
If everything goes well, I can get up, clear the cobwebs out of my brain, and be ready to sit down at the computer around … oh, 10:30 in the morning. Then I have at least a peak hour or two of productive work when my mind is really in gear. After lunch, things go downhill again.
The funny thing is that while I’m not an early bird, I’m not really a night owl either. I’m sort of a middle-of-the-roader.
My idea of a perfect schedule is getting up around 7:30 or 8 in the morning, and then having an hour or so for general puttering around, and only then actually having to do something where I have to think.
But events are conspiring to change me, kicking and screaming, into a person who gets up horribly early.
First of all, I’m dating a man who is in the habit of getting up at 5 a.m. and who often texts me or calls me before 7. He is a natural early riser who has a hard time understanding those normal people who drag ourselves out of bed a little bit later.
Now that wouldn’t be so bad if that were the only early morning factor. However, there is no rest for the weary, namely me.
Lately, the universe is conspiring to get me up even earlier than usual, which is making me permanently zombified. And I have at least eight more months of this to dread.
This year, my son’s high school schedule was changed to an extremely early one. He must be at school by 7:20 for band, which means we need to leave the house no later than 6:55 a.m. I have been known to get up as late as 6:50 for this.
The first couple of weeks of school, there was a real possibility of me falling asleep at the wheel on the way home. I’m not kidding. It was a little scary.
Now, almost two months later, I’m finally – kind of – adjusting. I sometimes wake up before the alarm goes off at 6:15. But that doesn’t mean I like it any better than when it started.
For one thing, now that it’s October, it’s really dark at 6:15 a.m. Disconcerting to say the least.
Instead of having some kind of wide-awake period during the day, I find myself shuffling along without being fully aware of my surroundings.
I also am going to bed extremely early – for me – around 10 p.m. I’m pretty much a basket case after about 8 in the evening.
This was the case last night when I was trying to do some work after dinner and found my brain to be frozen from lack of sleep. One woman called me after 9 and I was having a hard time forming words and getting them out of my mouth in a proper fashion.
You would think that I would get to catch up on sleep on the weekends. Not so, this time of the year, because there are marching band competitions that I must take my son to. This weekend, we’re off to Cupertino for the first of several.
And we must be at the high school at 6 a.m.
Like I said, no rest for the weary. I’d better get used to it.
