Please note: Last October (or was it November) when Day Light Savings occurred I decided that turning my clock back with the rest of the world was a waste of my precious time. Who needs that sort of ridiculousness. I’m intelligent enough to understand that I have to subtract an hour each time. Fast forward to today, we are now approximately 1.5 days from pushing our clocks forward (or for me, continuing to leave it alone, only now it will be correct) without a mishap…
I have this thing — paranoia – about getting up really early. If I have to get up before my regularly scheduled time I don’t sleep well, waking every hour or so to make sure I haven’t overslept. Which, of course, is what happened last night. I woke up every so often to see that I had plenty of time to sleep. What a glorious feeling — in the middle of the night, waking up to know you have 6 more hours — heavenly.
Here is the story (the long version) of my morning:
Anyhoo, I wake with a jolt at one point and look at my clock which glares back with a 5:00 am image. I register the fact that it is now time to pull my grumbling self out of bed and get ready for the day. So… I get up, brush my teeth, shower, get dressed, dry my hair, put on my makeup and walk down stairs. I let Charlie out and poor myself some OJ because at 5:30 in the morning, who doesn’t deserve a little Vitamin C? Charlie is stoked and I jam some orange medicine down his throat followed by a “face bath” because not even 1/2 of it actually made it down while the rest proceeded to mangle his whiskers and turn them a bright shade of pumpkin. Once the “face bath” was complete and he was thoroughly pissed at me I decided it was time to hit the road for my hour-long commute to work.
I’m not usually up this early, so I decided that it is awfully dark outside at 5:30 in the morning. And, being the lucky girl that I am, I live right outside of downtown Denver where lots of homeless folk frequent the alleys behind my house. And, my garage (which is not attached to my house) backs out into the ally. Alleys at 5:30 in the morning symbolize only one thing to me. Murder.
So I’m standing in my laundry room, futily trying to muster up the courage to walk through the BLAZING DARKNESS to my garage. I open the door (leaving all lights on in the house), turn to lock it (hair raised because at any moment a stranger is going to leap out of the darkness and beat me with a pipe), and run like hell to the garage door. I peek in the garage (which mind you is NOT locked) and turn on the light. I then run, again, like an idiot, jump in my car and lock the doors.
Starting to feel a little safer I hit the garage door button and get the engine going. Normally when I leave, I open the door before getting in the car (you know, normal sequence of events)… but since I waited (due purely to safety reasons) to open it until I was in the car, I backed out a *little* too soon and managed to scrape the entire top of my car on the garage door. Go me — who values their possessions? That is so 1996. I reverse and get on the road to work. I’m driving along, jamming out and thinking how no matter how much getting up sucks that “TODAY IS GOING TO BE A GOOD DAY!!!” I then look down at the clock in my car. It miraculously reads 4:45 am. 4:45 are you freaking kidding me?? How the hell is it only 4:45 and why am I up, showered and driving at this God forsaken hour? Being that it is so early it takes a few seconds for the “Aha” moment to really kick in. That clock at the end of my bed… It’s an hour fast — right. Damn it.
I then proceeded to have an internal debate about actually just going to work and going home. In the end going home won. I turn the car around and park in front of my house (much safer than the ally behind my house where the murders and men with pipes hang out). I get out and RUN with abandon to the front door. *If anyone was watching they would have questioned my sanity, and with good reason.* Our front door is tricky. Well more than tricky, it’s a rude little bastard when it comes right down to it. It never unlocks. I’ve got the key in there, jiggling it around, shoving, twisting the knob, and nothing is happening. I’m beginning to panic when it finally opens. I walk inside to find Charlie more than ecstatic to see me.
Clearly the only course of action was to go lay down for another 30 minutes or so before it was time to leave. So I do. I then get BACK up (btw, it was quite a bit brighter outside and quite a bit harder to pull my bedraggled self from the sheets) and head to work. As a reward for my suffering I permitted myself a stop at Starbucks, never mind the insane line, I deserved it.
A few hours later I run the bathroom in the office and catch a quick glimpse of myself in the mirror. I look 1.) Like I slept in my clothes 2. Completely disheveled (hair all kinky, makeup 1/2 on etc.) and 3.) Exhausted.
So hot damn, what a start to a Friday.
