Late is the New Early

Every morning when I get into work and my computer finally finishes turning on (it's got to load all the corporate spyware and so forth, so it takes a while) my dad instant messages me. It used to be that he would start off with a cheerful sally of "good morning" or "hi" - you know, usual greetings that you might say to someone at 7 in the morning after they just wrangled their way through the ubiquitous traffic in this area in order to try and earn a few nickels to rub together.

As my disenchantment with my job has deepened and my school work has picked up and Tim's school work has picked up and bedtime has crept later and later (to the oh-so-unGodly hour of 10:30 or thereabouts), the morning wakeup time has slowly slipped from 5:15 to 5:30 to 5:45 to 6:15 to, now, right around 6:30. And with each slip in time, my arrival at work has also slipped from 7:00 to 7:30 to now, right around 8:15.

Every morning as I get to work after 7, dad's IMs have slowly changed. He started with, "Slept in, did we?" and then "Late today." And then we would have a resurgance of will power to get up and get to work at 7 again. At which point dad would say, "In early this morning." and I would weakly protest, "No. On time." And he would simply laugh.

I think that Tim and I are finally going to admit defeat. Right now the 5am wakeup and 7-3 schedule just isn't cutting it. So, rather than setting the alarm for 5 and then groaning and deciding to sleep another hour, we're going to give 5:30 a shot and try, dilligently, to just get up when it goes off. That should still get us to work around 7:15 or 7:30 (which is tons better than 8:15 or 8:30) and maybe it'll provide a reasonable tradeoff. The downside is that I'll probably have to drive, since that gives Tim the opportunity to read some of his homework during the commute (not like I can read in a moving car anyway, so I might as well drive, but I can sleep in a moving car and had been enjoying my catnaps.) But if he can get some homework done during the commute that makes it possible to actually go to bed at a reasonable, yet slightly more grown up time - maybe somewhere around 10.

In the back of my mind I'm laughing hysterically at myself. I can remember thinking in high school that when I was "grown up" I was going to stay up until 11 every night, because that's what grownups do. Ha. By 9:30 most nights I'm ready for bed and staying up past 10:30 is akin to torture. On the up side, maybe this means one of these days I'll be healthy, wealthy, and wise.