Just Call Me Angel of the Morning

After which I may very well hurl the nearest small kitchen appliance at you, provided it's not the coffee maker.

Every once in a while, I have one of those days where I get to see How the Other Half Lives. And by "the other half," I mean you freaks those of you who do not greet the morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just ready to start the day (insert smiling 1950s housewife face here), but instead shuffle around in silence, shooting Death Looks at anyone who dares to initiate a conversation that requires more than grunting in the general direction of the coffee. (Yes, I have lived with a number of you, and I know the ways of the Non-Morning Person. I will be over here, cowering in the corner and making fresh coffee until you let me know it's safe to speak to you. Bagel? No? Still no on the talking? Ok, maybe around lunchtime?)

Thursday was one of those days. (Please be picking up on the fact that this was Thursday and I am just now getting around to writing about it. Yes. The excuses will reveal themselves in good time. Keep reading.) I woke up and I was just grumpy. There's no other word for it. (Ok, yes there is, but I like to save "bitchy" for when I do something intentionally. Like when I'm walking across the parking lot at such a velocity that I could get out of your SUV-driving way if I wanted to, but I choose to maintain my current speed, thereby ensuring that you will have to come to a full and complete stop before you honk your horn at me from two feet away. Not that this happened today or anything.)

Anyhow, me. Grumpy. In the morning. Which is just weird. And weirder still, none of the things that ordinarily perk me up seemed to help...shower, coffee, NPR. Nope, still grumpy. Once at work I reached deeper into my bag of tricks and popped an Excedrin Migraine -- elixir of the gods, though not so much of an elixir. Nugget of the gods? Pellet of the gods? (Right now I can hear my mother grousing about the irreparable damage I'm doing to my liver...as though the alcohol hasn't already killed it.) The Excedrin helped, but didn't provide the nirvana I was hoping for.

Turns out I was grumpy because I needed a little "me time." I'm not very needy (on this particular measure. Shut up.) so it often catches me off-guard when my subconscious takes over my life for a little while and demands that I do nothing for anyone but me. I know people who need "me time" about once every 48 hours. Me? I'm un-fazed by a lack of "me time" for a good three weeks, after which it takes another week or two or three before my sanity starts to check out.

It occured to me that I *might* need a little time to myself when I realized I was resenting the universe because I would give anything for JUST THREE MINUTES to recycle the Sunday New York Timeses that have been collecting in my living room for the past seven weeks. (Also? Wednesday night? When not being able to locate the wine bottle opener nearly sparked a troop deployment, the scale of which would be appropriate for invading a third-world country, deposing its dictator and searching for weapons of mass distruction? Yes, that was a sign. A sign that I missed, apparently.)

Around this point in the "ohmygod I need some time to myself" cycle, I start looking for *A* night to myself. (If you're not using your Mike Meyers/Wayne Campbell voice here, you're saying it wrong. Try again, with a short "a": *A* night.) And, as is typical, I realized that every night last week was booked.* And every night this coming week. And that the recycling will not be taken care of until sometime in September, let alone anything that might take longer than that, say cleaning the bathroom or changing my nail polish or fully unpacking a suitcase from any of the last three trips I've been on or, I don't know, maybe watching some damn TV.

*And by booked I mean, something is preventing me from being at home, probably work. Like when I didn’t leave the office until nearly 10 pm on Monday. Or how most of my dinner plans involve getting together with people from work. To discuss work things. And possibly some non-work things. But mostly work things.

And then I hurled small kitchen appliances at everyone in my office.

Ok, not really, but I did whine to myself about how I hadn't wanted those dinner plans tonight in the first place and maybe I should quit Banana to free up my weekends and then I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and determined that wasn't such a good idea and then whined some more about why is life so haaar-ar-arrrd????

(From a similar day last summer:

Me: I just want to go home, lay on the couch, and have someone be nice to me the rest of the night.
Mom: *sounding a bit surprised* Oh! And is there someone to do that for you?
Me: No. That's part of the problem. At least he could take out the newspapers.)

And by Friday morning, I was over it. (No, I hadn't yet had any "me time," I simply managed to whine it out of my system.) I woke up at 5:00, happy to hear the sound of the alarm and intently listening to the day's news from my friends at KXJZ. I left the house early and went on my merry way. Woo-hoo! Mornings are great! And at the end of the day? I got a surprise bonus of four hours all to myself, since Banana didn't need me. I did some shopping, watched TV, and painted my nails. And no kitchen appliances were harmed in the process.