Just pass the coffee, will you?

If you haven’t noticed already, I’m a bit of a night owl. And that suits my purpose just fine. Some of my best work has happened at the odd hour of 3 o’clock in the morning. The blog says I may have made multiple posts on the same day, when in truth, I was up until the wee hours of the morning (also known as deep night, those hours between 12:00am-4:59am), writing a post, only to turn around and do another one later that evening.

Although, again noting no siblings, I look back on my youth. Remembering that I spent quite a bit of time in bed staring at the upper bunk.  My mind would drift as soft Christmas lights would change their blinking pattern and alternate their color combinations.  (Strung up Christmas twinkle lights were my version of a night light, and much prettier.)

Note to parents: Twinkle lights are awesome for dark-fearing children, because they can use the excuse that they love Christmas to their friends.

 Also, this was before the ‘fad’ that stringing up white lights along the edge of your ceiling was delegated as a ‘hipster’ thing to do.)

Many evenings were spent just lost in my thoughts. (Well, as deep a thought a youth can have, I suppose.) Replaying recent TV shows or movies in my head.  You could say this was the time I first began making up stories. Just me, under the safety of my Smurfs blanket making believe I was a princess, a spy, a farmer, whatever. There was a brief period of time when I aspired to become a fire truck.  Not a firefighter, the actual truck. (What, can I say? Sirens are awesome.)  Never had any issues with monsters under the bed.

Note to parents: The way to keep monsters out of your closet and away from under the bed? Show the kids how their closet is full. That the children themselves can barely fit in there, so how can a monster?  Roll out drawers for storage of off-season clothing fills up the space underneath the bed.

Monsters? What monsters? There’s no way a monster can fit under your bed with the enormous Christmas sweater Aunt Mabel knitted for you to wear next year.

What?

Yes…

Yes, you’re wearing the sweater…  Don’t argue with me young lady!

Aunt Mabel worked very hard on that sweater. Just because she has cataracts and made one sleeve a half of a foot longer than the other is not reason enough to ignore such a gift!

Bring back the sweater and those matches to me this instant, young lady!

Mornings, however, are the bane of my existence. I’ll admit to having the slightest, fleeting moment of homicide upon initial waking.  You know that woman, stumbling around in her bathrobe, hair sticking out worse than Einstein on a bad day, mumbling to herself and others around her the gentle, harmless sentence along the lines of:

Slowly hand me back my f****** coffee NOW and no one will be permanently scarred!

Yeah… Sorry about that. I was… um… not myself.

My ever faithful and dutiful husband, Pilot (sadly finding out he was part of THEM. The oh-so-dreaded “Morning Person” people), learned quite quickly that I require at least one hour of no agitation upon waking. On a time-crunched day, a reduced and painfully necessary reduction to 59 minutes of no agitation upon waking.  Don’t worry, he’s survived stitches before.

<Lightly shaking me awake to the vibration standard of 10.5 on the Richter Magnitude Scale.>

“Sweetie, it’s time to get up.”

Mmmm…

“Sweetie, your alarm is going off.”

Mmmm… <pulls covers up tighter, bats hand away from my shoulder>

“Sweetie, your alarm has been going off for ten minutes now, and… we have neighbors.”

Mmmm… <rolls over, shoves pillow on top of head.>

As you can tell by the timing of this post, I’m burning the midnight oil once again.

So, readers, I want to know!  Which are you?  A morning person, or a night owl? Are you the early bird who catches the worm, or a evening person who doesn’t have to deal with worms?

What are ways that help you get up in the morning?

Mine’s an alarm that sounds like an H-bomb warning system going off and provides a mild cardiac arrest each morning. Pilot has learned to accept this as exercise and getting his heart rate up a little bit extra each day.

Oh, and coffee.  Lots and lots of coffee.  (Did I mention I live in Seattle?)

Daily Writing Challenge

Day 7: FREE DAY! Write any scene you want!

The dry leaves crunched beneath their sneakers as the girls wandered along a compact dirt path. Hand in hand, they continued listening to birds chirp throughout the empty branches, beginning to settle in to their nests for the evening.

It was nice walking, Margaret preferred gentle quiet. Lorelei, not so much.  Usually Lorelei was babbling on about a new rock band or her friends from school. Whatever was bothering Lorelei tonight must have been weighing heavily on her mind. Margaret was patient. She knew that her sister would share when she was ready, and if it was causing Lorelei to be quiet for a change, it must have been serious.

“Mags?”

Lorelei’s voice appeared in Margaret’s mind familiar, but tonight was subdued. Her voice did not carry the cheerful spirit it typically held. Instead, tonight it was pensive and thoughtful.

“Yeah, Leelee?” Margaret looked over to her sister; eyebrows raised and tried to keep her face open.

“Do you remember mom and dad?” Lorelei had stopped and turned to face her now.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you remember them? What color their eyes were, what their voices sounded like?

Margaret thought for a moment. “Yeah, I do.”

Lorelei’s voice was small, and she was looking down at the ground now.  “I don’t sometimes.  Remember, I mean.” Margaret’s heart sunk deep into her chest.

“I was only five at the time.  Sometimes I try to think back, but their faces are starting to get fuzzy. Things like their noses, or their ears.”

Margaret put her other hand on Lorelei’s cheek and began to speak and try to console her sister. “Leelee-“

“What if by the time we’re adults I’ve forgotten them completely? It’ll be like they never existed or something!” Lorelei burst into tears and sniffed. Sliding her sleeve over her thumb, she wiped her nose with it.  Margaret pulled her handkerchief, their mother’s handkerchief, from her pocket and gently dabbed at Lorelei’s face.

“Leelee, do you remember when we were little and you took that entire bottle of caramel sauce and sprayed all of the walls in the house with it?”

Sniff. “Yeah.”  Lorelei looked up at her sister, her eyes puffy and slightly reddened from her tears.

“And what did mom and dad do?” Margaret looked pointedly at Lorelei with a small smile.  Lorelei burst out laughing.

“Daddy took my had and walked me over to mom and said, ‘Well, at least we know she’s determined! I was chasing her for a good ten minutes!’ And mom said, ‘I guess she just wanted the house filled with sweetness just like she is!’ ” Margaret and Lorelei were doubled over laughing at the memory, Lorelei wiping a tear away, this time not from sadness.

“You see?” Margaret put an arm around her sister.  “You haven’t forgotten them. As long as you remember they loved us no matter what, they’ll always be with us.”