Return of the Night Owl

When I was grade school age bedtimes were too early for my taste. I could be found under the covers reading with a flashlight. Then came high school and I made sure homework was done before bedtime, but I listened to the radio until midnight. College days: everyone knows the best time to study is between 1:00 and 3:00 --- A.M.! All this made for a tough wake-up call before 8:00 a.m.

With the night owl securely entrenched in my daily schedule you can bet I wasn't an early riser. Then came baby. I was all ready for the 2:00 a.m. feedings, but the 6:00 a.m. was a bit hard to take. For that matter, the whole schedule went wacko for a few years.

Business hours, especially in Arizona, start much earlier to be in line with the East Coast. So for the better part of the last 25 years I had to get up between 5:00-6:00 a.m. In all those years I struggled with sleep deprivation because 9:00 or 10:00 was just too early to go to bed! Who says you can't make it up on Saturday?

Now, here I am in "temporary retirement" with no particular schedule. Yep, you guessed it, I can be found in my studio till the wee hours of the morning. As for the wake-up call? Well, Jerry is the early bird catching the worm while I am trying to catch more ZZZs. When I finally wake up, which is not as easy as flipping a switch, I am feeling a little guilty about the hour. I begin the guilty rationalization of how much I got done in the studio, I was on a roll, great old movie on TV, blah, blah, blah. But all that really isn't necessary. Jerry knows me and wasn't going to say anything about the late hour. "Honey," he says, "you need to get as much rest as you can. You were up late so you sleep later than I do." Ugh, the guilt digs at my stomach. All that fresh morning time wasted; burning daylight. Ok, I've got to start wrapping things up by 10:00 p.m. Right!

Once day a week we drive the 30 miles to Springfield for the major mall shopping. In preparation for this week's journey Jerry asks me how early we can get started. Zoom in on sideways glance as I ask "How early is early?" What a sweetheart as he replies "What would it take to get on the road before 9:00?" Gulping down that guilty feeling once more I tell him "A cup of coffee under my nose."

Fast forward to 7:30 a.m. A nice hot cup of coffee on my nightstand! What a guy! Twenty minutes later I stumble to the microwave to heat it up. Over breakfast we talk about making a schedule so we can get back on track now that we are about 75% settled in. Right. I'll get right on it. The day starts when?!?