The 5 o’clock Blues

This was the conversation we had just before my son shut the door of the car to go get on the bus this morning:

me: have a good day
him: leave me alone! You’re making my day miserable

Neither of us are morning people. But I’m old enough to know it’s me not “them.” That’s why I get up first…it leads to a much more pleasant exchange of a morning. Plus it allows me to remember all the little things we need to do to get out the door in time for us to get out the door on time, mostly. We need to be down at the bus stop at a quarter till seven. Much like myself, it takes the Little Dude a few minutes to wake up and get functioning. So, in order for us to get the day started with minimum bloodshed, I wake him up at 5:30.

I feel awful doing it. Probably from years of traumatic memories of having to be dragged out of bed to go to school. I hate waking anybody up-ever. But especially the little guys. I remember, and still believe, that you DON’T WAKE THE BABY! He’s still my baby and I hate to do that to him and to me.

My alarm goes off at five o’clock.

Generally, I wake up in a bit of a panic. First, because I totally, completely, and terribly abhor alarms. I have always preferred a radio alarm to the kind that beeps. Unfortunately I live out here in the country where the radio signal isn’t always reliable. I’ve had a few mornings where the station that was loud and clear the night before when I set the alarm was nowhere to be found when it was supposed to be there waking me up. I have reluctantly switched to the beep setting. Second, I jump up  to turn off the alarm before it wakes anybody else up. This isn’t really as big an issue as my sleep fogged brain would have me believe, but what are you going to do about that?

The one bit of good news about my alarm going off is that it isn’t my husband’s alarm. He’s hard of hearing and also hard of waking. When he shops for an alarm, he tries them out to find the loudest he can find. I’m pretty sure it’s the loudest bedside alarm ever made. Someday it’s going to go off and I won’t get up because my heart has exploded from the shock. Really, it is loud.

My alarm goes off at 5 because I need a few minutes of nobody around me before I can pretend to be the friendly person that I turn into later in the day. My mother is a morning person. One of those people who pop up at 4 in the morning bustling with a chipper energy that’s guaranteed to rub the rest of us the wrong way at that time of day.

I used to hate it when she would come in to wake me up with a sing-songie, “Rise and Shine!” It took her (and me, I suppose) years to figure out that she needed to pretty much leave me alone in the morning.

I am not nearly so chipper in morning hours, but I am better at playing the game than the Little Dude is. I’m sure he’ll get better as he gets older, but for now we just have to suffer though it until they start up a second school shift. (Please!?!)

How about you? Are you a morning person? A night owl? What about the people you live with? Do you match with them or do you have to find ways to tolerate each other?

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Today I am grateful that there was no reason for the other alarm to go off , that we had strawberries (nothing like a little surprise in your cereal to help the morning suck less), that our soccer game tonight got postponed (we’re just tired this week), that our new teacher is not assigning homework this week, and, as usual, coffee!