Morning People

On weekdays, I wake up around 5:45.  I don't leave for work until after 7:30, so I have ample time around the house in the morning.  Even if I were to oversleep by an hour, I'd still be able to get to work on time without a problem.  I have an alarm clock but I rarely set the alarm.  I don't like being awakened by the alarm clock and I don't sleep well when I know the alarm is set.  I spend the night checking the time every few minutes, ready to silence the alarm if the wake time is near.  I own the clock because I don't like waking and not knowing what time it is.  Even when the alarm isn't set, I probably check the time three or four times a night. 

For a time this last winter I thought I'd trained my body to wake up precisely at 5:45.  It didn't matter when I went to bed, at 5:45 I would inevitably roll over and check the time.  This only happened on weekdays, on the weekend I slept later.  What a machine I have become, I thought, somehow perceiving when it was 5:45.  What were the clues my body used?  What was so different about this time than, say, five minutes earlier or later?  Finally, one morning the cat woke me at 5:40.  As I lay in bed, I listened to the stillness of the house.  Then, at exactly 5:45, the furnace kicked in.  From the second floor, it was barely perceptible but I heard it.  I'd forgotten that I'd finally gotten around to using the programmed feature of our thermostat.  I'd set it up to drop the temp every night and raise it again in the morning, 5:45 on weekdays, 6:30 on the weekend.  Apparently, I'd unknowingly set an alarm for myself.  We'll see how things work as the outdoor temperatures warm up.

My youngest son sets his alarm every night.  He sets the alarm time for 6:50, which is well before the 9:30 start of school.  He's usually wrapped in a blanket when he joins me at the counter.  This makes him harder to hold but we manage.  By 6:50, I've had a chance to read the paper and eat breakfast.  I leave the paper open to the comics and he and I read them and pick our favorites.  After that, he'll often move to the couch, where he falls back to sleep.  I then return to the paper and work on the crossword puzzle.  This has become our ritual.   I don't know if it will continue during summer break - I suspect it will.

This morning he showed up at 6:10.  He said he made a point of waking up before the alarm because he didn't like how it felt when the alarm woke him.  I wonder where he got that from.