Morning Glory

I've never been a morning person. Ever. When I was growing up, it was not unusual for me to sleep until noon or 1pm during the weekends. I enjoy my sleep. A lot. When I don't get enough of it, don't even try to be happy around me. Run. Run fast and find a good hiding place.

When Dave is home, we get to bed by 11:30 and are up (usually) around 6:00am. I don't like it, mind you, but that seems to be a schedule where we can work out together, I can scrapbook and get in a shower, all before a freight train Jake comes barreling in at 7:00am.

When Dave is not home, I don't typically turn out the light until 1:00am and then I sleep in until my own personal human alarm clock lets me know that it's "seven-zero-zero". We take our own sweet time getting ready in the morning and then waste away the day.

Not this week. Dave is not home so I'm still staying up too late and being shocked out of my slumber by Jake at 7:00am. But this week, we had painters coming in everyday at 8:00am which meant that I needed to be up and showered by then to let them in the door.

So you can imagine how frustrated I was when this morning at 4:45am, I heard beeping. This incessant, loud-enough-to-wake-the-dead beeping. This unidentifiable, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard-beeping. This UNLOCATABLE, for-the-love-of-God-PLEASE-STOP-BEEPING beeping.

I was convinced it was the fire alarm mounted in our hallway, so I walked out of the room and gave it a good stare down. The beeping stopped. Triumphant, I returned to bed. Only for the beeping to continue. We had 2 more stare downs before I decided that I had the ultimate power in this situation: I had the power to flip the switch on the circuit breaker. Take that, you electronic coward that doesn't have the nerve to beep when I'm looking you in the eye. HA! Now if I can only remember which breaker it's on. Finally, after 3 tries (which means going up and down the stairs to the basement to test the light switch to make sure I've hit the right breaker), the accused is silenced.

I went back to bed, and the beeping continued. Near tears at the amount of sleep I WASN'T getting, I finally tracked the noise down to the Carbon Monoxide alarm that the painters had unplugged in order to paint the walls. They then put it under some plastic, although I doubt they did it to torture me. But still...

I plugged the unit back in and went back to bed. It was now 5:30am. I drifted off thinking "I've still got an hour and a half left...." Then the crying started. Jake was crying out because his night light was not on. His night light that is controlled by the same circuit breaker as the wrongfully accused fire alarm. The same circuit breaker that I forgot to turn back on after finding the real culprit. So I head back downstairs to the basement to turn the breaker back on.

Finally, with the beeping stopped and all electricity to essential lighting fixtures restored, I return to my bed, already asleep before my head hits the pillow. Then the cat started crying. Deciding the cat can work his own problems out, I lay in bed, wide awake until 6:15am. I must have drifted off because I was asleep when the 7:00am freight train came through right on schedule.

But it all has a happy ending, because you can't beat your 4 year old son lying in bed with you, rubbing your back and giving you kisses on the cheek and saying, "Mommy, you sleep until the clock says seven-two-zero. Then you can get up."

At least he's learning early how to deal with his Morning Glory Mom.