Lazy
I am not my mother. I, in fact, have NO memory of my mom being in bed when I woke up as a child. She was up, singing, cooking breakfast, listening to some cheery-in-the-morning radio show. As I recall, I would slump at the table and HATE these odd morning people. I have vivid memories of many comments about my face possibly freezing in a terrible scowl. If my sister or brothers blog, there might be one right now about monster sis in the morning. They are all bright-and-early people and probably still whisper about me behind my back.
When I went to college, I figured it all out. I'm NOT a morning person, and it's OK. Really. I scheduled all my classes for four (well, OK, five) years to start well after 8 a.m. Actually, I had one 8 a.m. lab that I vaguely remember had Icelandic TA's ...and I say "vaguely remember" because I went ONCE. That was enough. Of course, this is the person who got up, stormed out, and dropped classes if the prof mentioned writing papers. That worked until my senior year, when, doggone it...all the classes had papers. But they still started later than eight. To me, a perfect day in college started at about 10:45 and ended at about 2:45. I wondered why the whole world wasn't structured like a university campus....pick your schedule, go only if you care to, wear whatever you rolled out of bed in, and let your dad pay for it all.
Mr. herewegoagain is with me on this one. We are not a case of "one early-bird and one night-owl". He can manage it if he HAS to (which I cannot), but we both agree on one thing...weekends are to be lazy. He still laughs remembering my first job out of college when I had to be there at seven a.m. (really, where are the unions when you need them?). I used to (apparently according to him, I have no memory of this) primal scream, "Ohhhhhh noooooo", when the alarm went off at five. I only remember occasionally falling asleep with my head against the shower door.
So, instead of my children waking up to bacon sizzling and mom singing from some Italian opera....my kids steal into my room and shake me by the shoulder. "Mom", they whisper, "um, Mom". It always gets louder and ends with, "I'm hungry". Or my personal favorite is when sweet girl skips the "trying to wake Mom softly" bit and just opens the door, clutches her stomach and says, "I'm so hungry my stomach hurts". That pushes all the mom buttons.
So, I stumble out, and yes, it's later than ANY of my friends are getting up, I can assure you. But hey, it's the weekend, and hey, there IS cereal (nice, healthy, best-choice-for-breakfast cereal) in the cupboard. But I make a big breakfast. I don't sing, but I wish I did, because I ALWAYS think of my mom at this point. My food is much better than hers (see "Food") but it is never served with the same panache. It also could qualify as lunch at this point.
My dad was a retired Naval officer. HE thought if you weren't an early riser that a) there was something wrong with you and b) consequently you were less of a person, in fact, you were LAZY. I rebelled against it as a child, but as an adult, I tried to hide my flaws when he was visiting. I tried SO HARD to beat his internal alarm clock and would rush into a dark kitchen to stumble around and start coffee, when out of the darkness I would hear, "I've been up since five". There he would be, sitting at the table. I never did wake up before him. My sister (three small children is a good excuse) always did, and he admired that so much. I heard often "they get up early at the W's house" in a disapproving tone as he and I sat and drank that coffee in my dark and sleeping house. As he aged, it became more and more important for him to know that the whole world knew HE was an early riser. He mentioned it in every conversation, "I was up at four this morning"--this to the checker at the grocery store. "Got up before five"...this started every phone call to perfect daughter at college. "I was up before six" to whoever was phoning way too early (eight a.m.--on a weekend, are you kidding?) in my home. Somehow though, he never mentioned that he often went BACK to bed and slept to a perfectly reasonable time. In fact, I started to realize that his "early mornings" were, in actuality, potty trips. Well, OK, then...if that's the case, then I want the whole world to know that I was up at THREE this morning.
I finally beat him.
When I went to college, I figured it all out. I'm NOT a morning person, and it's OK. Really. I scheduled all my classes for four (well, OK, five) years to start well after 8 a.m. Actually, I had one 8 a.m. lab that I vaguely remember had Icelandic TA's ...and I say "vaguely remember" because I went ONCE. That was enough. Of course, this is the person who got up, stormed out, and dropped classes if the prof mentioned writing papers. That worked until my senior year, when, doggone it...all the classes had papers. But they still started later than eight. To me, a perfect day in college started at about 10:45 and ended at about 2:45. I wondered why the whole world wasn't structured like a university campus....pick your schedule, go only if you care to, wear whatever you rolled out of bed in, and let your dad pay for it all.
Mr. herewegoagain is with me on this one. We are not a case of "one early-bird and one night-owl". He can manage it if he HAS to (which I cannot), but we both agree on one thing...weekends are to be lazy. He still laughs remembering my first job out of college when I had to be there at seven a.m. (really, where are the unions when you need them?). I used to (apparently according to him, I have no memory of this) primal scream, "Ohhhhhh noooooo", when the alarm went off at five. I only remember occasionally falling asleep with my head against the shower door.
So, instead of my children waking up to bacon sizzling and mom singing from some Italian opera....my kids steal into my room and shake me by the shoulder. "Mom", they whisper, "um, Mom". It always gets louder and ends with, "I'm hungry". Or my personal favorite is when sweet girl skips the "trying to wake Mom softly" bit and just opens the door, clutches her stomach and says, "I'm so hungry my stomach hurts". That pushes all the mom buttons.
So, I stumble out, and yes, it's later than ANY of my friends are getting up, I can assure you. But hey, it's the weekend, and hey, there IS cereal (nice, healthy, best-choice-for-breakfast cereal) in the cupboard. But I make a big breakfast. I don't sing, but I wish I did, because I ALWAYS think of my mom at this point. My food is much better than hers (see "Food") but it is never served with the same panache. It also could qualify as lunch at this point.
My dad was a retired Naval officer. HE thought if you weren't an early riser that a) there was something wrong with you and b) consequently you were less of a person, in fact, you were LAZY. I rebelled against it as a child, but as an adult, I tried to hide my flaws when he was visiting. I tried SO HARD to beat his internal alarm clock and would rush into a dark kitchen to stumble around and start coffee, when out of the darkness I would hear, "I've been up since five". There he would be, sitting at the table. I never did wake up before him. My sister (three small children is a good excuse) always did, and he admired that so much. I heard often "they get up early at the W's house" in a disapproving tone as he and I sat and drank that coffee in my dark and sleeping house. As he aged, it became more and more important for him to know that the whole world knew HE was an early riser. He mentioned it in every conversation, "I was up at four this morning"--this to the checker at the grocery store. "Got up before five"...this started every phone call to perfect daughter at college. "I was up before six" to whoever was phoning way too early (eight a.m.--on a weekend, are you kidding?) in my home. Somehow though, he never mentioned that he often went BACK to bed and slept to a perfectly reasonable time. In fact, I started to realize that his "early mornings" were, in actuality, potty trips. Well, OK, then...if that's the case, then I want the whole world to know that I was up at THREE this morning.
I finally beat him.
posted by herewegoagain at
8:03 AM
3 Comments:
When you say your Dad was a retired Naval Officer, do you mean he had already retired before you were born? Or he was on active duty and retired sometime in your childhood? And what did he do in the Navy?
I get up every weekday at 4:30 AM. It drives my lovely wife up the wall. She says she's gotten used to it by now - she knows when my alarm goes off it means she has exactly 2 more hours to sleep.
By
Kevin, at 10:05 AM
Amen to that!
I get up early during the week because, well, I have to. But weekends are definitely days to be lazy. Unlike your household, however, the other member of my household considers 6:00am (ack!) to be sleeping in and is thus bouncing around and making restless noises by 6am on a Saturday morning. This is generally NOT met with a sweet or loving reprimand.
By
Maria, at 10:18 AM
It's so fun to get comments! And my hubby gave me such a hard time about this blog..."can you ever write about anything besides how sleep-deprived you are?" (which we both know I work really hard at NOT being!).
An Icelandic TA is a teacher's aide (is that really what they are called in college?..it suddenly sounds very kindergarten-ish...we just called them TA's) from Iceland. I had two for Biology. They were also in my Swedish class, but that's a whole 'nother blog.
My dad retired from the Navy when I was 2 years old. He never said "I retired from the Navy", he always said, "The saddest day in my life was the day the Navy retired me". We grew up playing with his hat, his sword (really, what were they thinking?) and all his medals. He went in as an enlisted boy at age 17 for the end of WWII, got out, went to college on the GI bill and went back in as a career officer (he also used to say, "I've been enlisted and I've been an officer...an officer is better") in the Korean War...he was in until the first days of Viet Nam when the navy was patrolling the coast there. So, he had three war medals.
He spent the rest of his life traveling and yanking us all over the world with him...once the Navy gets in your blood, its hard to settle down.
My dad died this past July. I'm going to devote a blog to him one day. And I'll start it at 6 am to make him proud.
Thanks for reading. I've been visiting your blogs too...that last entry about the near collision was gripping and yes, made me think of the MANY stories my dad told. He was a navigator on a destroyer when he retired and that gave him ulcers (cause of retiring!). He also spent a LOT of time at the Recruit Training Command in San Diego. He ended up being a trainer in "the private sector" for the rest of his life. He would LOVE "cornerofthecosmos".
By
herewegoagain, at 4:30 PM
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