As mornings go, it wasn't too bad.

I awoke after the sixth snooze. It is one of those mornings where you lay in bed, hearing the alarm, but not really paying a whole lot of attention to it.

I do set my alarm one hour before I have to get up. I don't like getting up very much, and need to be led gradually down the path to awakeness. Abrupt awakeness and I do not get along very well. My spell checker does not like the word awakeness. It doesn't find it in the dictionary. I do not feel like zipping over to Dictionary.com to find it.

It is hard to awaken gradually in a house with three small girls. However, gallantly trying every single day to do just that, in fact, isn't all that hard if you set the alarm for one hour before you have to get up.

Now, that may seem a bit foolish to some. And, to them I say, sleep an hour in my bed!!

Firstly, I simply reach over and hit the snooze, or more precisely, hit in the direction of the snooze. I usually manage to get it right on the fifth or sixth try. That connects my brain pathways to daylight. I turn my body in the opposite direction of the alarm, hoping that since I am not, in fact, acknowledging the alarm, that it will start to not acknowledge me. It hasn't worked yet, but I keep trying.

The alarm goes off again. I roll over and fling out my arm the two required feet to the top of my seventeen year old clock. I really like that clock, and it still works, more or less, and so, have no instant need to replace it.

I fumble around in the dark, even though there is quite bright sunlight streaming through my window. It is dark because I have firmly refused to embrace the dawn, so to speak, and my eyes are quite tightly shut, driving out all semblance of light and newness of the morn.

I hit it again. Two for two. Rolling back over again, in my stubborn insistence, I not so gently move one of the smaller life forms that reside under the covers with one of my feet. Chihuahua's slide easily on 800 count Turkish Cotton sheets. They sort of glide right over.

Uh. Oh. ONE of the chi's is NOT under the covers, but is in fact, ON top of the covers. I tug. I tussle. I try to rip. The covers, warm and comfortable, do not move. There is a slightly more than ten pound weight on top of the covers, and in my weakened almost post sleep state, I do not have the strength to move the obesity that is my chi.

I kick at her instead. She knows better than to be on top of the covers in the morning, or rather, she should know better. She has been sleeping with me now over 10 years.

The smell of coffee starts making connections with the neural pathways in my brain that are necessary to awaken. DH has gotten up and thoughtfully let Monster out and turned on the coffee pot.

The smell travels around the brain awhile, finally lighting on a particular pathway that sends a signal to my awakeness center that says “hey!! if you ever do decide to get out of this nice and warm and snuggly bed, there is a nice and warm and delicious cup of coffee awaiting your palate...”

I tell the smell to go find somewhere else to be for a few minutes. I am totally not ready yet to embrace a cup of coffee.

Eventually, I give up the battle and go ahead and get up. Sometimes, in petulance to DH who will continue to snooze, uninterrupted as I go about my morning ablutions, I intentionally do not turn off the alarm. Every ten minutes it will continue to go off, blaring hard acid rock out of the two bent speakers, full of static and Ozzy, and I will hear it in the background, and smile, knowing it is bothering him, but he will not roll over and try to reach it. It is my little way....

Today I intentionally tried to be a nice morning type person. This is a gargantuan task for me to attempt this early.

I steal quietly into the older girls room. ½ Pint sneaks out of her room to surprise me! I smile, and hug her.

¾ Pint jumps out of her bed, ready to go. Today is field trip day for her and she is looking forward to the field trip. It is the first day she has gotten out of bed willingly.

Pint, sigh, does not wake up nice. She takes after me. I tickle her leg. I pick up her covers and wave them gently, letting the breeze sneak in under to waft around her tired eight year old body, gently caressing her awake. She moans.

I tickle some more. She opens one eye and glares at me. I am her snooze alarm and she doesn't like alarms. You can just sort of tell. There must be a strand of DNA in our makeup that we share. A little dongle on the double helix that says....Alarms? No way!!

I offer her a piggy back ride to the table. She accepts, falling onto my back from the top bunk. I carry her into the table.

She falls out of the chair.

Wail.

She climbs back up. Wail.

¾ Pint is glaring at me. Make her stop.

I tell ¾ Pint to not glare. She says she is not looking at cousin, doesn't like cousin and would not look at her if you paid her to look at her, which no one is offering to do anyway.

She wails.

On my way to the bathroom, I mention (nicely, and you have no idea how hard THIS is to do) to DH that I could really use a hand OUT HERE this morning. It goes ignored.

I get through breakfast. No blood, no major fights, everyone takes their medications, I find clothing for each of the three girls that sort of matches. They get dressed, we do hair, make lunches, find bookbags, socks, shoes, all the accouterments of school life.


There is 15 minutes left. They turn on Nick. I check my mail.

The alarm goes off on my phone. We head out the door. ¾ Pint wants me to walk down the driveway with her.

I do. As we are waiting, the girls pick flowers to give to the bus driver. The flowers are weeds, but children don't care, and I don't think the bus driver does either as she is the mother of a six year old boy, and so is probably quite comfortable with receiving dandelions and little purple and green thingys instead of tulips and daisies.

The bus doors close. I return to the house. DH is still sleeping.

I have to clean, then pack. I haven't actually had time to pack yet, and we are due to move in three weeks from today.

But, I didn't yell this morning. I distinctly remember smiling on more than one occasion. I found joy in picking weeds with three little girls. The sun is shining. I got a hug from 1/2 Pint.

That is five good things to start off the day.