Friday, December 2, 2011

Dear morning, your mercies may be new, but I still do not enjoy you

It's five thirty a.m. and I've been up for an hour. The sun is nowhere to be seen and my husband accidentally woke me up, get this, by sliding the bathroom drawers open too loudly. In the bathroom down the hall. With the bedroom door shut. And the sound machine next to my head. With orange foam earplugs in my ears.

As any one of my college roommates can attest (if they are willing to revisit the hateful looks and dramatic mound of pillows stuffed around my face), I have what my family refers to as the Bionic Ear. The real princess could feel the pea, but apparently I can hear lunar changes. You've heard of the butterfly effect? I can hear it beating its tiny, frail wings.

Now all of this would be of no consequence if I were a person who was preternaturally wired for just a few hours of sleep. If I woke up at 4:30 a.m. feeling rested and was one of those creepy people who likes to venture into the cold dark frost of a Michigan December morning and do something wildly insane, like actually trying to run from one place to another instead of ambling leisurely only when the minivan is getting its tires changed, that would be one thing. But I'm not. I'm no Bill Clinton. I am a person who tells herself to exercise and then says "Self, who are you to tell me what to do?." I'm a person of hot baths, long books, warm beds and, preferably trays of prepared food brought to my reclining body. I'm a person whose childhood nickname was Couch, short for Couch Potato.

I'm putting my time to good use. I'm studying my Bible, folding my laundry, drinking Diet Mountain Dew after Diet Mountain Dew and carb-loading to try to keel through the day on a sugar high, but I'm not happy about it. Just ask my husband.

2 comments:

Janice said...

Amen! What is with those people who voluntarily wake up BEFORE 5? It seems like medically there must be something wrong with their bodies. Because it couldn't possibly be my lethargic, half comatose body with the problem.

And why exactly does early morning have to attack my stomach? It's cruel to give me lack-of-sleep-induced nausea when drinking caffeine that is the only solution to waking myself up.

Still, the house is silent and the knowledge that every door upstairs hides a sleeping person who I love is a blissful thought.

It was beyond lovely to talk to you yesterday. Of course we have to do it much more often.

Enjoy the rest of your morning!

Molly said...

I, too, always associate early-morning industriousness with our former president.