Get Up! Get Up! Get Up!

Beep!Beep!Bee-. Every morning 6:05 AM. It is a daily irritant, but a comforting irritant – it means I didn’t wake up at 5:15 AM or 4:45 AM for no good reason or the cat dropped something and startled me or the dog whined. It means I slept through the night. Yay me.

It also means that I didn’t blearily look at the clock at 6:04 AM and turn off the alarm to spare myself the sound – and go back to sleep until 6:30 AM. So that my unrushed morning routine that is supposed the start no later then 6:05 AM, to fill an hour of time can be condensed into a panicked half hour. Dogger and Kitty do not like this. There is no time for playing or cuddling. It’s all about getting them fed, relived and put away. I missed my paper and my tea.

Usually I am so good at getting up in the morning. I am a morning person. I get things done in the morning hours. I suck all afternoon, but before lunch I am a hurricane.

So. This morning I’m dreaming, about? Nothing. Well, it was a sitcom of a dream. I seemed to be talking to someone or listening to other people talk, but it wasn’t quality talking. The reason behind the cosmos was not being explained. A total waste of time. I was more awake then I thought, because when I think I must have turned over to look at the clock earlier in the morning and being satisfied that the alarm was about to go off, turned it off.

Moron! This is not why I have an alarm clock next to my bed! The idea is to get up to hear the noise, turn off the noise, get out of bed and do my thing. In my own time. Slowly, with out haste, with out stress. I do the same thing every morning and I am very good at it. I have enough time that if I need to deal with trash day or clean out the cats box, I can, it’s okay. I do not have enough time to over sleep and still languidly go through the paper and drink my tea. I like reading my paper and drinking my tea, I do this every morning. I like doing this every morning. I don’t do it over the weekend or on holidays, it’s my work morning routine. I don’t even have to look at the clock once I’ve gotten started. I know that by the time I have read the funnies, skimmed the celebrity gossip, read the metro section columnists and glanced at the obits, it is 6:30. I get up, put my make up on, fix my hair and start to get the blinds open. After all this is should be about 6:45, I work fast, I can finish reading the front page and bring Dogger in from the yard.

I leave the house at 7 AM.

Drive to work, start day. Dull, Dull, Dull.

So, I haven’t read the paper, my tea did not get made and I missed the garbage man. Kitty didn’t get cuddled and Dog got shorted on her morning dig up my yard.

Thank God for whomever brought the doughnuts to the office, because the morning had been so wrong. The doughnut was a happy thing. I also scored no messages on the phone, catty email messages or the real killjoy have finding someone rooting around in my office with out me.

I can almost see the carpet in there now. I able to vacuum in there by the end of business too. The Mouth that Roars will be out of the office until next Monday, so I may be able to get things done.

Why am I vacuuming my office? Don’t they pay someone to do that? Yes, yes they do. Do they vacuum my office? No, no they don’t.

So. I vacuum my office. Usually I have so much stuff on the floor that I can’t vacuum it anyway, I could, but it would be such a hassle it becomes easier to just not look down.

Oh, and RIP Larry Hovis. What a nice man! He was also a good man, an attentive husband and father. He and his late wife married for the long haul, a feat in Hollywood.

I had the privilege of knowing him at school and learning from him. He was a genuinely good person and an excellent teacher. He cared and he could find the good in almost anything, no matter how bad a performance I or anyone else, turned in, he would find something about it that didn’t suck – he wasn’t all happy mouth about it either, he would tell you what didn’t work, but he never made me or anyone else, feel bad. He helped me learn from the bad performances.

What a nice man. An actual Gentleman.

He was a great guy and I miss him. I bet he would have been tickled to be remembered on CNN.com and E! online. There is a memorial at the school on Saturday and I wish I could be there. My sympathy to his family and friends. Bye Larry.

edited to add, RIP Johnny Cash and John Ritter