
When my children were young, I introduced them to the joy of snuggling, and as they got older, I taught them how to feed themselves, and admonished them to let sleeping mommies lie! On a typical day, by the time I get up (notice that I did not say wake up, I am often awake and able to shout orders from the command center of my bedroom), my children have fed themselves, clothed themselves, done their chores, and started their schoolwork.
As for my business, there is nothing that can be accomplished before 10:00 am that cannot be accomplished after 10:00 pm. For some reason, my brain goes into overdrive at 10:00 pm. After 10:00 pm, I can solve all of the worlds problems, unfortunately, by the time I accomplish that feat (usually around 1:00 am), my world is asleep, and there is no one to bask in the glory of my omnipotence! (It's lonely after midnight...sigh...)
The only thing that has ever come close to changing my circadian rhythm is my flock of chickens. My what? You heard me, my chickens. (Bad things happen to good chickens when left unattended in the morning!) I have been known to get up at sunrise just to make sure that everyone is alive and well, but once I train my chickens to behave (or rather once the new birds adapt to the established pecking order), they no longer NEED me until 9 or 10 am (although if I see a kid passing by the doorway of the "command center" before then, I will often holler, "Go let the chickens out!" just to be safe).
As for my new leaf, it really comes down to homeschooling and babysitting. The little guy whom I babysit arrives at 8:15 each day, which is much better than his summer arrival time, which was the unholy hour of 7:30 am! Every morning, I would stumble to the front door to let him (and his three sisters!) in, mumble some incoherent drivel to their mother, close the door, and wonder if she was concerned about leaving her children in the care of someone who was barely lucid. Fortunately, one (or both) of my "early-riser" children would swoop in all bright-eyed and busy-tailed and deliver me from the horror of becoming fully awake at that most unspeakable hour. (Bless you, Asres and Olivia, you were my salvation!)
You can only imagine how ecstatic I was when the "other" mother's hours changed, and I did not have to drag myself out of bed until 8:15 am...JOY! I was so thrilled with this new arrangement, that I actually started setting my alarm for 8:00 am just to pre-wake myself and enjoy that warm, cozy almost awake feeling...you know the one I'm talkin' about... It's so much better than that just-got-thrown-into-a-freezing-cold-lake-lurching-to-wakefulness experience! (For the record, when I wake up too early or too quickly, I actually feel physically ill, like I'm going to lose the breakfast that I have not yet eaten...it's kind of a Ghost of Breakfast Past, Present, and Future thing...) I digress...
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Don King |
So what, pray tell, is this "new leaf"? I will be attempting to return to that most unholy hour of 7:30 am...by choice! (*cue audible gasp*) No really, don't scoff...I'm serious! I'm so serious that I have set my alarm for 7:30 for the past two days. Day one was an epic fail, and I don't really want to talk about it... But today, today was much better! I got up at 7:45, and I kind of liked it! All the livestock was fed by 8:00, and I was able to savor fifteen minutes of silence during which I read my Bible. I used to think that nothing good could happen before 10:00 am, and I was wrong. Perhaps I have been wrong about 7:30, too... Wish me luck...I'm bound to backslide, but today is the first day of the rest of my life...CARPE DIEM!
PS: I know that it may seem ironic (absurd?) that someone like me would call their blog "Carpe Diem!", as I tend to "sneak up" on the day rather than "seize" it, but I am a work in progress, and "carpe diem" is what I aspire to!