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The Early Bird Can Go to Hell

This past weekend, the missus and I set off on that ski trip I talked about.

Well. 'Ski trip' is what she called it. I call it 'strapping plastic to my feet and sitting on my ass in the wet snow for three hours'. I could have saved a lot of time and effort by making myself a pair of teflon shoes and taking an ice bath in the upstairs tub. Also, there would have been significantly fewer witnesses. Or so I would hope.

"I could have saved a lot of time and effort by making myself a pair of teflon shoes and taking an ice bath in the upstairs tub."

However, it wasn't the winter sports -- the technical term for mine was 'bowlegged flailboarding'; I looked it up -- that gave me the most trouble that day. Rather, it was that our jaunt to freeze our asses off in the great outdoors was something of a 'day trip'. And the mountain we picked on which to ice up our keisters was two and a half hours away. Which meant getting up at an ungodly pre-dawn hour to start the day.

Which is not my bag.

Oh sure, I can stay up into the ungodly pre-dawn hours. That's no problem. But pulling an all-nighter before trying to learn a new sport that involves hurtling sideways down a hill didn't seem like the brightest icicle on the rooftop. So I hit the sack around midnight, wrestled with insomnia for an hour or so, and finally drifted off to sleep.

The next thing I know, the radio is blaring, my wife is shaking me like a vodka martini, and the clock is mocking me with an unholy early time starting with a '5'. Which is just freaking ludicrous. Especially on a weekend.

I've always maintained that getting up before six am is for roosters and farmers. And getting up before eight is for people who have to drive those roosters and farmers to work, or make them breakfast, or unlock the coops and barns to let them in.

I've had more than a few teachers and principals who disagreed with my theories. They liked to tell me, 'Well, we can't change the entire school day just to suit your schedule.'

Personally, I don't think they tried very hard. They never petitioned the school board or anything. Slackers.

I'd forgotten just how cranky I get when I wake up before any sane person should be conscious. But I do get cranky. I spent twenty minutes bitching at the towel rack during my shower, then cussed out my bowl of cereal's mother. I don't know if Fruity Pebbles actually has a mother. If it does, then I have to assume it'd be Fruity Wilma, who I've got no beef with. But at six in the morning, no one is safe. If I can reach you with my spoon, you're in the line of fire. Look out.

I try not to snap at my wife in these situations. I love her, and she's a wonderful, patient person. Also, she knows where my testicles sleep. So I'm not eager to cross her or make her consider any sort of revenge. The best thing to do in these situations is just to keep my snarky mouth shut -- so that's what I did. Not a word getting ready, a noncommittal 'Ungh!' on the way out the door, and then I slept for the first hour of the trip. By eight, I was awake enough to be civil, so I could chat a bit without getting myself into a divorce settlement of some kind.

Now I just have to apologize to the cereal box. And its family. Lord knows I don't want the whole Flintstones vitamin bottle gunning for my ass. You get a pissed-off Dino jumping down the wrong pipe, you're in deep prehistoric doodie.

See, this is why I don't get up early in the morning.

Comments

Posted by: unfinishedrambler | March 1, 2009 11:24 PM

Posted by: Charlie | March 3, 2009 2:09 PM