I am the kind of person that needs to wake up somewhat gradually. That is to say, I am not one of those "alarm clock goes off and I get out of bed" kind of people. There are occasions that will make me hop out of bed with the quickness, like when I sleep through my alarm clock and realize that I was supposed to be at work 17 minutes ago, or when Wifey punches me in the eye (it really happens more often than you think). At moments like that my eyes pop open, my heart starts to race, and I jump out of bed. But as soon as the adreneline / pain wears off, I am ready to fall back asleep. I say all of this as a way of explaining that I have 3 alarms that go off in 30 minute intervals so that I can go from dead to the world sleep to annoyed at the prospect of having to get out of bed soon sleep to resigned to the fact that I have to move if I am going to be at work on time acceptance. Its like 7 stages of grieving every morning.
**On a side note, I do the same kind of thing almost every day while at work. I have stuff in the fridge and freezer here to have for lunch so that I can save some money over going out to lunch every day. But at 10 AM nothing I have is what I want, so I start to think of Baconators and Chicken Carbonara subs. Then, the next 2-3 hours are spent debating the merits of eating the stuff I have that I don't want versus eating the stuff I don't want to have to leave the office for just to spend money I shouldn't be spending. 99 times out of 100 I eat the stuff I brought in. Every so often my need to get away from the desk / coworkers and my desire for something not pulled from a cardboard box and microwaved (at least by me. I know that is pretty much what they are doing wherever I wind up if I do leave the office, but since I am not the one doing it it makes it different) leads me to the open road and eventually to the strip mall down the street.
Enough with the digression. Back to the story at hand.
Another thing that is a curse of mine is that when I am in the world of half awake and half asleep, my internal clock loses the ability to tell time, and I start to think I have overslept and missed my next alarm and am now late. I then think to myself that it is silly, and I have not had that happen since I was in my 20's and was out drinking most nights and was more apt to sleep through my alarm clock because the whisky had not completely worn off yet. But I will lay there wondering what time it is (my cell phone is my alarm clock, and while there is a clock at the end of the room, I am severely nearsighted and without my glasses all the clock looks like is a blur of red LED), and there is not way to quickly check the time, so to do so means effort, and effort is the antithesis of lying in bed avoiding reality. So I lay there, and eventually I check my phone and it is still 14 minutes before the alarm clock is going to go off again, but now I am half sitting up, and my brain is chugging along and I know that to lay down again will only lead me to trying to predict when the alarm WILL go off and fighting the fact that I should just get up so I am not so damned rushed this morning, and hey, if I get out of the house early enough maybe I can hit the McDonalds on the way in, because who doesn't like a McGriddle now and then (only Mormons and Communists, in case you didn't know the answer to that question)? But to get out of bed early is to surrender rest time (and yes, I know that I am not resting for these 20 or so minutes, but dammit I am laying down, and I don't want to get up yet!). So I lay there, having a war of logic versus comfort in my head, until the alarm goes off and I begrudgingly get out of bed.
It is at this time that I should also tell you that I have my leaving the house and arriving at work JUST IN TIME pretty much down to a science, knowing that depending on at which point in my 5-7 minute window of departure time that I leave the house I am going to have to be that much more creative in my I-95 passing and lane weaving (something I try to avoid as much as possible, because I hate all lane weavers other than myself, because none of them ever have a valid reason like I do when I do it). And part of my internal debate is the thinking that I could completely avoid this if I get out of bed at that moment instead of waiting until the last minute. And then, during the drive in to work, every pass and weave is met with the back of my brain telling me "if you had gotten up when I told you to we wouldn't be doing this, dumbass!". All of that factors into my morning "Crossfire" like brain battle, also.
So I pulled into the parking lot at 7:59 this morning (it would have been a little better, but there had been a stalled car in the tunnel causing a bit of a traffic snafu), and as I was getting out of my car, Chinn 1 (the one who works on cubicle row with us, albeit a corner cubicle and he isn't locked to it for 8 hours a day like we are) pulls up in his truck, so we walk in together. And if I am walking in with one of the owners of the company I CAN'T be late, right?
One day I hope to be a pancake.
I'll have one of these http://consumerist.com/5342699/kfc-has-a-bacon-sandwich-that-uses-fried-chicken-as-bread with an aside of pancakes and baconators.
ReplyDeleteDon't you have a coffee maker with a timer/clock? Those are the best for waking up to fresh coffee. Unless you know someone who says that plugged in coffee makers cause forest fires and/or house fires and won't let it stay plugged in.
I have heard of the magical "Double Down" sandwich, and am in equal parts intrigued and concerned with being suddenly associated with the words "myocardial" and "infarction". And I do have a coffee maker with a timer, but the smell cannot get to me in a concentrated enough form because the smell travels with the steam, which means up, and the bedroom is below the kitchen. So that helps me not one little bit.
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