Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Morning Has Broken...Me

Anyone who knows me knows that I am NOT a morning person. I've tried, really I have. I've been told that you can get used to getting up early if you do it long enough, but I figure at this stage of life, it ain't gonna happen. I mean, there were twelve years of getting up early for school, then a couple of years of getting up early for a job, then a brief moment (about 15 months) after marriage when I could indulge my sluggy self and sleep as late as I wanted, followed by infant/toddler/preschooler times two (which meant not sleeping a whole night through PLUS early mornings for a few years), then getting up early to get them off to school, then seven years driving a school bus. Trust me--if becoming a morning person depended only on getting up early long enough, I'd beat even the early bird to the worm. But the truth is that the last day of getting up at 5:30 to drive the bus was every bit as horrible as the first day. After I left that job, I scored a job with extremely flexible hours and immediately slumped back into slug mode.

But recently, I've been getting up early (for me, anyway) for the temp job with the Census Bureau. And, ya know, it wasn't that bad. Sure, that hideous noise of the cell phone alarm going off in my ear was totally obnoxious, but I changed the sound to a "perkier" one that doesn't make me want to hurl the phone against the wall (fortunately, my fast-twitch muscles take even longer to wake up than the rest of me. If I even have fast-twitch muscles, that is.) If I got up right away instead of mashing the snooze button, I discovered that I was relatively alert and not totally dying. I can't imagine why things would have changed. Maybe it has something to do with getting older, or maybe it's just that 7:30 feels almost like midday after seven years of 5:30 wake-ups. Whatever, I decided that I would try getting up at 7:30 every day, at least for this week, and see how it went.

Well. It's now about 3:30. I have done the dishes, washed sheets, blocked the Swallowtail Shawl that I finished last night (yes! A finish! Actually one of two!!), planted marigolds, beans, watermelons, and rosemary, potted up the basil and oregano, washed and blocked a sweater front, done some Bible study, combed some of the Border Leicester fleece I bought a couple of months ago, and made yogurt. Oh, yeah, and I've knitted a little too.

This is astounding. Of course, I'm very tired right now and will probably need to take a little nappy-poo shortly, but I'm feeling mighty virtuous at the moment. Think of all the projects I may be able to get done! I do hope this lasts.