Mornings

Morning is here, the morning's here ...

Mornings are never a good time for me. I am not what you would call a morning person. I'm convinced this is genetic, and so I blame my mother for this. During my childhood, we were not allowed to speak in the morning becuse it caused my mother physical pain--something I readily agreed to, because, let's face it: there's nothing more annoying than cheerfulness in the morning.

Unfortunately for everyone else in the house, my father is nothing but cheerful in the morning. He likes to hum cheerfully and make small talk and talk nonsense. The two most annoying things he does in the morning are (1) whistle happily and (2) say things like, "Are you up for all day?" to which I usually whine, "It's only 9 o'clock. You can't say that until at least 10:30."

The older I get, the earlier I find myself getting up each morning. Still, my 'early' is another person's 'late', which makes the 6:30 rise-and-shine time of the weekdays especially painful.

I usually wake up before 6 to get the dog up. She eats, goes outside and does her business, and then we both go back to bed for an hour. She curls up in a tiny ball as close to me as she can get without actually being on top of me.

When the alarm (my cell phone) goes off, I hit snooze at least three times, sometimes four. I absolutely canNOT get out of bed without hearing Matt and Meredith's voices, so I turn on the Today Show while still in bed. Once they've previewed the top stories, I drag myself out of bed and brush my teeth while watching Today.

Next I hop in the shower, always swearing to be as fast as possible, but usually standing under the scalding hot water as long as possible. Once I'm out, I slather on some lotion and put on my makeup. I comb my hair and put in mousse if it's a curly hair day. Then I get dressed. Once my hair as had a little time to air dry, I blow dry it and fix it as best I can.

After the hair is finished, I usually need to reapply some undereye concealer (damn you, dark circles!) and then put on my accessories: earrings, watch, scarf, belt, shoes, etc. After a last look in the mirror to make sure I don't look too disgusting or sleepy, I say, "Okay," to the dog still sleeping on the bed, who hops up, tail wagging, and runs to the kitchen. I turn off the TV and the light in the bathroom, and head to the kitchen where the dog is waiting excitedly for her treat. I give her a treat and she hops into her kennel, I turn down the heat, throw my coat on, call good-bye to the dog, swear creatively because it's so late, and rush to the garage.

I like routines and I like this one, but that's not to say I wouldn't enjoy it more if it were happening about four hours later each morning!