Crap O’Clock

I am slumped in my comfy chair, still in my jammies with a hot Magic Bag softening my stiff neck and shoulders. A bleary-eyed Ter is nursing the day’s first cup of tea from her corner of the loveseat. Neither of us has the energy for small talk. A mournful wail suddenly wafts up from the lawn beneath our window, wending its way into our living room—it’s the three-year-old downstairs, voicing his displeasure at being dressed and out the door to daycare before seven a.m. on a weekday.

“Suck it up, junior,” I say, bluntly. “Life is hard so you’d better get used to it.”

Cut me some slack, okay? This is the same kid who wakes me from a sound sleep at this same ungodly hour on a Sunday by galloping gaily up and down the hall beneath our suite. Instead of sympathizing, I take a perverse pleasure in him being hauled out the door against his will two days a week when I have to get up and go to work for five. He thinks he’s hard done by now? Wait until he starts school, heh heh.

Yup, it’s a hard life all right. I am not nor ever have been a morning person. I have learned to appreciate the beauty of a sunrise over the ocean or the tranquil solitude of a pre-breakfast flânerie, but overall, I’d rather stay up late than get up early. And I can sympathize with Junior Jinx (as Ter calls him) to some degree: I became “anti-morning” when I started school myself. It’s not that I disliked school (much). I’m generally quite happy when I get to the office, too. It’s the getting up at crap o’clock to go somewhere I’d rather not go that well and truly bites.

I don’t know how my mother did it. She was always the first one up, summer or winter, rain or shine, and breakfast was usually on the hob before she knocked on my door with a cheery, “Wakey, wakey!” or—after my bones kicked in—an even brighter, “Pill time!” Those were bleak mornings for sure. I can’t imagine she liked them any better than I did, but I never saw it.

During a recent work tea with Treena, she reminisced fondly about the idyllic days of childhood. “Do you remember waking up every day, full of excitement and eager to see what adventure awaited?” she asked, wistfully.

I just stared at her, wondering what that must have been like. It seems every morning of my life is met with the question of whether I can do it. Whether I can get up and get going. It was particularly grim when I was younger, but I’ve hated being woken up forever. Sure, I can wake up happy on a weekend, but who doesn’t? It’s a weekend, for Pete’s sake!

Which reminds me: I have to reset the alarm before I go to bed tonight.

Crap.