Timing is Everything

I've had weird sleeping habits for as long as I can remember.  For many, many, many years I slept about four hours a night.  And I felt great.

Then came 40.

And suddenly, I require a lot more sleep to feel rested.
But my internal night-clock doesn't understand and so I find myself waking up at 2:12am and 3:40 in the morning.  It doesn't help that my beloved husband comes home around 2:15 for lunch and I can't resist spending some time with him.  Besides...he rubs my feet.

So, here's the time line:
Hubby is up at 9:30pm to get ready for work.  Leaves at 9:50.
Son goes to bed at 10.
I go to bed at 10:15, but tiptoe back to the living room to watch tv til 11:30.
Then I go to bed.

2:12am, I wake up.
2:20 I drag my still-awake self out to the living room to await my husband's arrival.
We visit for about 30 minutes, then he heads back to work.
By then, I'm wide awake and I spend some time on work stuff.  E-mail mostly.
Then I'm stressed so I spend some time watching tv.

By 5:00am I'm back in bed, and have my alarm set for 6:30. In the summer, I'd hit doze every 9 minutes and finally drag myself out of bed at 8:00.  Work starts at 8:30 in the summer.
I arrive around 9. (Though I justify this because I leave the office about 45 minutes - 1 hour later than other staffers.)

But summer is over.  In fact, yesterday was the first day of school.

My son is excited - and so are we - at the possibilities for greatness this year:  For a teacher that inspires, and instills the importance of reading into my son's life.  For a newly updated playground with really cool four square sections on the pavement.

And so we go to bed, miraculously, by 10:45 we're all tucked in.
At 1:45am, my husband gets up.
At 3:40 I wake up.
At 5:40 my son wakes up.
We know this is not good.
But we can't help it:
  There's GREATNESS awaiting us in the morning, right?
But I insist on pretending to be in control and therefore make us go to bed.
So, at 6:15am, the three of us get INTO ONE BED, and I turn off my 6:30am alarm.  I can see Kent on the other side of the bed double-checking his alarm.  He set it before we went to bed the first time for 6:45.

And there we are: three sardines, sleepy and sick from lack of sleep, in bed with thirty blissful minutes of sleep to look forward to before the alarm sounds and the GREAT DAY OFFICIALLY STARTS.

I doze off, and the alarm goes off.
We hit the floor running.
Everyone's (amazingly) in a good mood.

There's even time for toast.
Because it's only 7:00.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It's not 7:00--it's 7:15.
Because my husband RESET HIS ALARM without telling me!  And it's fifteen minutes later than it's supposed to be.

WHAT WAS HE THINKING?
SERIOUSLY???

The BUS runs at SEVEN FIFTEEN!!!!

So, there we were:  toast in hand, looking through the still-closed curtain when the bus goes by.

Kent and I trudge back to the bedroom to get officially dressed while I ask him over and over and over "what were you thinking?"

It's the first day of school.
The first day of greatness.
The first day of fourth grade.
And you choose to change the alarm without consulting the rest of the family?

SERIOUSLY?

Yep.
We missed the bus,
had to drive to school.
The back doors to the school were locked.
But George looked great.

And isn't that what's really important?