A RARE AND UNUSUAL PHENOMENON

I had a rare experience this morning that I have to share with you.

See, my alarm went off and I got up.

Shocking, I know. 

Somehow I didn’t groan, roll over and beg Father Time to back it up a little so I could catch a few more winks.

Instead, I got right out of bed, made my way to the kitchen and fed the cats so they didn’t have to beg for food like…well…like dogs.  They didn’t say so, but I’m guessing they were grateful that I didn’t try to confuse them this morning.

After I fed the felines, I made a cup of coffee and sat in the living room to enjoy the sunny morning for a bit before getting ready for the day.

What makes all this rare?  Because it. Never. Happens.

I am not a morning person. Never have been. I don’t understand the concept of sunrise and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one.  Sunsets?  Sure. I even have pictures.  But sunrises?  Not so much.

So I sat on the couch in the living room enjoying my coffee and gazing around my little domain.  Also rare this summer was the sunshine.  I think I read that in the last 19 days we’ve had rain 16 of them.  No matter how you look at it, that makes for one soggy summer so far.

So I enjoyed the sunshine.   And I noticed – for the first time in the year since we’ve lived in this house – that the sun hits the purple crystal hanging in the living room window at precisely 6:47 a.m. where it sparkles for a few brief moments before the sun moves on and highlights something else.  Since I’m all about the sparkle, I delighted in the vision.

But then what happened?  I started noticing that the window behind that purple crystal needs an immediate date with a bottle of Windex. 

And then I shifted slightly on the couch…and I saw a filament of spider web hanging down from somewhere up high, connecting to a glass globe on the coffee table and ending somewhere inside the decorative bowl in the middle of the table.

Ugh.  WHY did I have to shift slightly on that couch?  I would’ve been happy to have been blissfully unaware of that filament.  Not only that, but I am not a big fan of creepy crawly things so removing the filament brought with it the possibility that an actual spider would come out of his hiding place to find out what was happening to his handiwork.

I had to give the arachnid props though. If he had started up in the ceiling fan or on the ceiling itself, he had to create a whole lot of silk to get from there down to the coffee table. It’s a VERY high ceiling.  Poor guy was probably napping after his long journey. 

Nevertheless, I put down my coffee cup, went to the closet to find a dusting cloth and then wiped off the table, the glass globe and the decorative bowl. 

That done, I decided I’d better jump in the shower lest I find even more surfaces that need some attention with a mop, broom, or other cleaning implement.

So it looks like I have some sprucing up to do this weekend.  But don’t I always?  It’s one of those never-ending chores that won’t go away no matter how hard you clean.  The dust and dirt always comes back.

But despite all that, I truly enjoyed those brief moments enjoying the morning sunshine.  Who knew you could get so much pleasure out of taking a few moments like that before starting your day? 

Yeah, yeah, okay – so half the free world recognizes this.  The other half – like me – are affirmed night owls with an aversion to sunrises and spend every possible second snuggled up in bed waking up only to hit the snooze button one more time.

But maybe…just maybe…I’m not quite so averse to sunrises anymore.  I’ll have to test the theory.  Just not tomorrow. It’s my day off – and I’m probably going to want to sleep in.

(Heyyy, what can I say? We can’t push this “early bird” conversion. Change takes time y’know.)

Seriously…have a good weekend all. Enjoy your sunrises. And your sunsets!

The Night Shift

The other day I was forced to call myself a former night owl. I did not, however, state that I’d turned into an early bird.

Like all former night owls, I still value my morning sleep-in and I know perfectly well I’m not going to get up when the first alarm goes off. I set at least two wake-up alarms on my iPhone each night, and when the first one sounds I can easily talk myself out of getting up – no matter how important the reason seemed to be the night before.

About the only time I’ll truly pay attention to that first alarm is if I have to catch a flight somewhere. If it’s an early enough flight, I’ll probably just stay up all night rather than take a chance on oversleeping and missing my plane. With the full body scans and TSA groping sessions we have to endure nowadays, there is no such thing anymore as dashing into the airport at the last possible moment.

But, anyway, I’d have to say that I’m more of a mid-day kinda person. Sure, I’d far prefer avoiding the whole rush hour traffic thing – but even if I worked from home, I couldn’t see getting started before, oh, say, 10AM. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable start time to me.

Sadly, mid-day kinda people don’t get a whole lot of respect. People figure they’re late for something…even if they’ve missed nothing but rush hour.

True night owls, on the other hand, tend to gravitate toward careers where they can work the night shift, which means they’re most likely happily snoozing away in the morning while I’m struggling to get myself out of bed.

I’m not exactly qualified for careers that are best suited to night owls, however. Entertainers, for example. I can’t sing and I can’t dance – or at least, no one would be interested in paying to see me do either one of those things – unless it was for purely comedic purposes.

I could have worked in the food service industry, I suppose, but my first ever job (besides babysitting) was as a busgirl in an Italian restaurant when I was 16. That experience taught me that, while I could bus a table with the best of ‘em, I wasn’t ever interested in moving onward and upward to the wonderful world of waitressing.

That looked like some serious hard work and I really didn’t want to try to hone the ability to balance a heavily-laden tray in one hand while dodging hungry customers and other servers without dropping stuff. I embarrass easily and I couldn’t see myself ever standing red-faced in the middle of a busy restaurant with broken china and plates full of spaghetti and meatballs all over me and the floor! Plus, the whole tip thing was just a little too nebulous for my comfort. I didn’t like not knowing how much I was actually going to earn after a day’s work.

Maybe I could’ve gone into the medical field so I could work the overnight shift at an ER…but I was never really good at science. Medical emergencies make me nervous and, other than being the first to offer up a Band-Aid and a squirt of Neosporin or some paper towels to sop up the blood, I’m perfectly okay stepping aside and letting the professionals offer assistance.

So…I wanted to be a night owl. I had the mindset to be a night owl. But I didn’t have the independent wealth to allow me to be a night owl. I need, as they say, a “day job.” Thus, I arm myself with a minimum of two alarms every morning to prod myself into getting up early to get ready for the day.

I suppose someday I will retire and will then get to sleep in as late as I want. Only from what I understand, senior citizens sleep fewer hours and therefore don’t tend to sleep in. Darn my luck.

All I can say is thank God for creating weekends.

Now...if you’ll excuse me – I got up a little too early today. It's time for a nap!