I like to get up a little before 5. I go downstairs, feed our Maximum Leader, brew some java and then surf the web and blog. Around 6, I get our daughter up and the school and workday begins. That hour or more to myself in the morning makes all the difference in the rest of the day.
This morning, my wife nudged me and let me know it was 6:15. I was still asleep. Mornings like this set my teeth on edge. I need my coffee to get going and I need my alone time. It's not a practical thing. I still ended up with my coffee and I can find the same amount of alone time elsewhere in the day's schedule, but I throw an internal tantrum if it's not first thing in the morning.
I know what you're thinking - set your alarm, dummy! Irrational tantrum #2: I don't like to set my alarm. If I do and I wake up in the middle of the night, I lay there calculating how much time I have left before the alarm goes off and can't get back to sleep.
Everything in the morning has to be just so. It's a sacred ritual. An irrational, sacred ritual.
My ritual works almost every morning, but when it doesn't the day begins under a cloud.
The best part of waking up is Folger's and the Interweb Tubes.
The thing that really messes up morning rituals for me is the whole, idiotic "daylight saving time" thing. In the spring, I end up losing my early-morning time. And then in the fall, I end up getting up around 4:00, which may be *too* much "alone time".
ReplyDeleteDaylight Saving Time must be destroyed!
Tim, Tim, Tim. If we did away with DST, how would we be able to wake the mules to plow our fields? Get with the times, man!
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I loved about Arizona was no DST. They can't abide that foolishness there.
ReplyDelete"how would we be able to wake the mules to plow our fields?"
ReplyDeleteSomehow, the idea got around that DST was done to accommodate farmers. This is the kind of thing that makes me either laugh hysterically or weep tears of frustration.
Farmers *hate* DST. Particularly dairy farmers. Cows are creatures of habit, so you can't change milking time abruptly. Which means that twice a year, you have to slooowly change milking time over a period of a couple of weeks, and your time is out-of-synch with everyone else during this period. This is extremely annoying. And for crop farmers, it is at best irrelevant - they largely just run by the sun and ignore the clocks anyway.
I'm not sure what group of people was supposed to benefit from DST, but it isn't the farmers.
Oh, wait. Wikipedia says:
"Historically, retailing, sports and tourism interests have favoured daylight saving, while agricultural and evening entertainment interests have opposed it."
Tim, Tim, Tim. If we did away with DST, how would anyone find their way to Target in the dark to buy their Padres baseball caps to take back home to Michigan? Get with the times, man!
ReplyDeleteGrew up in Indiana. We didn't have it for most of my life--basically because the farmers didn't like it. Grew up on state line with Ohio, so it was like being on Central Time for TV for the summer. Good times, good times...
ReplyDeleteBTW, I am the Anonymous who grew up in Indiana, and my name is lee and I comment occasionally here. I'm just too lazy to log in tonight.
ReplyDeleteCome on back any time, Lee.
ReplyDeleteLee/Anonymous/Hoosier again...
ReplyDeleteMy mom loved it because the Indiana TV stations held stuff until prime time, but the Ohiostations, prime time still started at 8, but 8 EDT, which was 7 EST (Indiana time.). Anyhow, the upshot was, my mom would watch the first half hour of the movie on an Indiana station, and then switch to the last half hour on the Ohio station. The middle was usually time-filling fluff. She got the jist of the movie and in bed by 10 pm EST (Indiana time.)
Yeah. I never had a problem with that. But to this day I am still baffled by "Spring back, fall forward?" "Fall back, spring forward?" They make equal sense to me. It's easier for me to try and remember whether it was the fall or spring (when I was in grad school and first had to deal with daylight savings time) when the bars were open an hour later. Yeah, the fall meant more beer.