sleep

don't wake me up. like how my cousin called my house this past saturday at 9:30 a.m. to ask me some stupid question about something that coulda waited until some decent hour. or like how my mom, who is staying as a houseguest, did this morning, wondering if i was gonna be late for work. i know what i'm doing! i been getting myself to work and school for years now just fine all this time and i don't need no help. trust me, i know what time it is. i am fully aware of what my alarm clock said when it woke me up and i turned it back the hell off. i have opened my eyes just enough to comprehend and gauge the passage of time, and i know exactly how much time i have to get to where i'm going. and you wasting my few-more-minutes time by asking me if i'm going to be okay is hemmin up my progress.

i shouldn't have to be getting up anyway. we no longer live in an agrarian society. there is no reason why we should have to get up early in the morning to go anywhere picking string beans or cotton or whatever else. if we wanted, we could all start the workday at 1:00 in the afternoon. makes sense to me. i discussed this with my mom this morning after i finally got up and started getting ready for work. she starts with some early bird gets the worm foolishness. every corny bone i have in my body must come directly from her. i am not a bird. i don't want no damn worms. next. so she suggests that it's good that our workday is early because daylight is supposed to give you energy. so let me get this straight. i'm supposed to use the most energetic part of my day working for the man instead of using the most energetic part of my day for myself, doing what i love? aw naw dawg. that don't make no damn sense. it should be the other way around. i should do what i have to do AFTER i done got finished doing what makes me happy. that prioritizes things in order of importance, see?

of course all this translates into me being a not-so-chipper morning person. and i don't do coffee or paxil or prozac. so what people get when they wake me up in the morning, or when they say hi at work is the real me that maybe people shouldn't know about. i try to warn co-workers, "holla at me after bout 10, 11:30," but do you think these people listen to me? that's why they get a lot of mumbling or silence or deadpan stares in the morning when they be askin me stuff about how my weekend was or how it's going. first of all, why you asking when you really don't care. are you going to do anything but feign sympathy and offer no solutions if i happen to tell you that my weekend or last night or how it's going sucked? secondly, if you gon ask me stupid questions, can you do that after most of the morning has passed so that i can have enough time to put my mask on, put some suburbia in my voice and reply, "oh it was great, how bout yours" as if i care, ala truman in the truman show? small talk is not my strong suit when i'm in an honest mood, which just happens to occur often in the morning. these people keep playing with me and i'ma wind up telling them the truth about their stanky breath or how the barber screwed them over the weekend.

all this could be avoided if i could just come in at 1:00. i wonder if i could get some kind of get-out-of-mornings-free pass from a doctor or something that i can use for the rest of my life. my mom said she feels sorry for my husband and kids (how you gon feel sorry for people you don't even know yet) cause of my busted morning attitude. what will i do when the kids have to go to school in the morning and i'm growling at them cause it's morning and they dragging to make the bus? not my job, mom. i'll put em to bed, let him wake them up. well, what about my husband? he can't ever wake me up? hell no. if he was smart enough to marry me, he'll be smart enough to leave me alone. at least let my bedroom be a sanctuary of sleep. where mornings are respected as the "i work hard enough to do what i wanna do in the morning" time.

if i'm not working for myself on my own schedule within the next ten years, i'ma just quit my job and lobby congress to fix this 7-8-9 to 5 workday foolishness myself. (i probably won't get anything done, what with waking up at 11:00 and all, missing phone opportunities and stuff, but whatever. at least i'll have my mornings.)

anyway, happy anniversary to my parents, even though neither one of y'all even attempts to mess with the internet. thirty-one years. impressive...