Waking Up the Monster

That monster is me, by the way.

I am not a morning person, and that's the polite way of saying I'm NOT a morning person. Plain and simple. I've never been one: I'd rather stay up late than wake up early; I'd rather spend another ten minutes sleeping than take ten minutes to actually do my hair; I'd rather frantically look for clean clothes in the morning than wake up all of those two minutes earlier to plan out what to wear a bit better (this is a little easier in the summer when I live in dresses and sandals).

When I was a senior in high school, my sister was in her freshman year. This meant she could wake up earlier, take her shower, and wake me up when she was finished. . . . I had a reason to sleep in more because she was in the bathroom. Regardless of the fact that we had two other showers in the house. This does not mean that when it was time to wake me up I listened, it usually took a few (sometimes loud) requests to get me up. And at 6:45 she would be at the back door waiting for me: backpack on, my keys in her hand, her foot tapping, and her face suggesting I get a move on it. She clearly got the morning-person genes in the family.

In college I always signed up for the later classes if possible, but let's be honest, there's really nothing unique with this statement. This is just the college way of life.

And now every morning, when Mike leaves for work, he kisses a half-stunned, barely awake wife before he walks out the door. He says he can tell which days I'll get up on time and which days I won't based on my reaction, my body position in bed (Am I sprawled out and using all of the surface area? Am I still on my stomach? Am I half-buried in pillows?), whether my eyes are really open or not when I say "Good-bye" and "I love you," and how wide open my mouth is since I'm, sadly, a mouth breather. (There you have it, blog friends, I just admitted to you that I am one of the ugliest/least graceful sleepers out there, but then again, some of my college friends already knew this as they have said Sid from Ice Age reminds them of me . . . awesome.) I was notorious for going back to sleep after Mike said good-bye to me even though I should just get up then and there (I have been much better at getting up when he leaves, now that Mike has switched jobs and leaves the apartment a little later than he used to). But sometimes I'll still lie there for a few extra minutes because it's just so nice to have that extra time to myself without hearing him getting ready, and I can have all the space and pillows I want.

So you can imagine why Mike laughed at me two nights ago for a good solid minute when I told him Ginna and I were going to a spin class . . . before work . . . at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. I think it was the pure determination to prove him wrong (and the idea that Ginna would be ringing our buzzer to wake up my lazy tush if I wasn't downstairs) that got me out of bed yesterday morning.

I think I like spinning. I think I may even like the whole working-out-before-work thing (Ginna, read "may"). The class was less full, the machines available. I got a great sweat and then went home and showered, made coffee, ate breakfast, made the bed, AND did my hair.

Does this mean I'm a morning convert? Nope. Let's not get crazy here, folks, it's only happened once so far, and it's very hard to break a twenty-six-year-old habit. But then again, I'm making the bed every day. And I had a just-as-long habit of not doing that consistently. Not to mention, I've only bought my breakfast three times this month (and that's only because we were out of milk). So that means I'm taking the five to ten extra minutes each morning to at least eat breakfast, if not make it (cereal seems to be the easiest option, obviously, but I also love making oatmeal from scratch)--and this was another hard habit to break because it was so easy to pick up breakfast on the way to work and eat it at my desk.

I wanted to work out this morning, and had planned on it, but when Ginna had to bail for a legitimate excuse, I decided to sleep for another hour instead (not a legitimate excuse). The last two nights I was so worried about not waking up on time that I woke up every hour thinking it had to be time to get up already, which caused a very disruptive sleeping pattern. And while I had a lot more energy yesterday than I thought I would (I thought I'd hit a wall around 2 or 3, but it didn't happen), that energy was still around at 11:00 when I wanted to be asleep so I had enough sleep before waking up the next morning. Hopefully tonight won't be as bad, as Ginna and I are taking a beginner's yoga class tomorrow morning.

I know that this will be a good thing. I won't have to worry about working out after work, which I always hate doing because I don't want to eat dinner at nine. And of course, even when I think I'm going to have a slow week, my nights always seem to fill up (like this week: seeing Company with Andrea last night, Brad's birthday tonight, kickball tomorrow, and softball on Thursday), not to mention the fact that I have a freelance job due on Friday and one due next Wednesday, so all the hours I am not doing other stuff need to be spent on freelance work (probably should be the other way around, but hey, I need a life, too!).

The only bad thing I can see is my morning good-bye kiss. This may sound cheesy (okay, it does sound cheesy), but I love when Mike kisses me good-bye in the morning, even though it sometimes means waking me up to do so. There's just something so comforting about it and it's a part of our routine. It felt weird being the one to kiss him good-bye yesterday morning . . . though I'm sure he's not complaining about it. He got to experience that extra time in bed that I so enjoy--now he'll be the one sprawling out and using all the pillows--at least a few days a week.