I am not a natural morning person.
I can get up and be pleasant (see later paragraphs in this post), but it’s not my natural state.
Night time is a strange and odd beast to me. I love the peace and quiet it offers. If I fall asleep about 2:30 or so, I can sleep until 9:30 or 10 and have a wonderful day spill out in front of me.
When I was a child, Mom discovered that between 3:30 and 5:00 am was my lowest point in my biorhythm. My fevers spiked then, my body erupted into insanity – usually about 4:15. I haven’t changed. My body temperature always rises at that time of day. If it’s the middle of winter, I simply snuggle in a little closer with my blankets and all is good. Middle of summer … oh holy smokes, I’m cooking the cat under the blankets. Menopausal? Well, that’s when I’m going to be standing in front of a fan, begging for the heat to be turned down. Menopausal and middle of summer require the A/C to be at about 45 degrees. Unless I’ve only been asleep a couple of hours and then it’s all good.
Well, that was a bunch of random insanity and here’s why.
I went to bed early last night – around midnight. That means I woke up at 4:30 (old lady – gotta potty) … hot … wide-freakin’ awake. Oh well. I can sleep when I want to sleep, right? This is normal behavior and generally isn’t a problem.
Fell back to sleep about 6:45 – kind of. The cat was up, too. I let him out onto the front porch so he can greet all his nature friends. About 7:30, he woke me up because it was time for him to crawl under the comforter and get his next eight hours of sleep.
At 8:15, my phone rang. Groggy, groggy, what’s happening? Why is there noise in my world? What’s going on?
I couldn’t think, couldn’t find my phone, couldn’t read what was happening.
Crap. It’s the A/C repair guy and he never answers his phone and I didn’t get to the call in time. I stumbled around the house for a few minutes trying to decide what to do. Not sure why there needed to be a decision in there, but apparently there was.
I called back, he didn’t answer. I left a voicemail and stumbled around some more. Should I take a shower? What if they show up while that’s happening? What if he calls back while that’s happening? OMG, I need a keeper!
I never feel quite as stupid as I do in the morning. It takes me a while to get from sleep to fully alert and Dianelike. Most people know to let me do it quietly. It’s for their protection.
This isn’t new information. Thirty years ago (don’t make me hurt you – it’s still early), I was working in a church in northwest Iowa and the secretary there was the sweetest woman I’ve ever known. She figured out quite quickly that I needed caffeine and quiet first thing in the morning. Shirley thought it was funny. She’d say hello and smile as I stumbled about from my office to the staff room where I picked up the mail and a cup of tea. Then she’d grin when I’d stumble into the senior pastor’s office so the staff could pray at eight – bless his little pink heart – twenty-five. About nine o’clock, she’d come into my office and ask how I was doing and if there was anything I needed her to know that day. She loved me.
When I was a kid, Mom hated mornings with me. She finally told me that I had to at least try to be pleasant, even if I wasn’t awake. I learned to put a smile on (it was easier than having her yell at me regularly) and acknowledge the rest of the people in the house, even if I couldn’t make sense of everything that was happening.
In my last book, Polly drips water on Andrew to get him out of bed one morning. I didn’t make that up. Because he was in a sleeping bag, she dripped it on his face. Mom just pulled the blankets off the end of my bed and dripped water on my toes. Then she told me I couldn’t be in a bad mood. It wasn’t easy living with her.
The thing was, she was a night person, just like me. That’s why she wouldn’t let me get away with being nasty about it. I could be thunky and slow-witted, but I had to be pleasant.
So, I’ll be pleasant when the A/C repair guys get here, but I can’t guarantee anything beyond that.
