A Well-Deserved Snooze

I'm all for Good Samaritan sacrificial love, but mornings are hardly the time to practice that kind of righteousness. Sleep is too rare a commodity these days to go playing Johnny Do-gooder in the manana. In my experience, that miserable time between asleep and awake when a thick layer of grogginess sits on my head like a soggy diaper is better spent squabbling with my husband about who should take the A.M. shift of Peewee Patrol.

"You do it."
"No, you."
"You."
"You."
"You."
"You."

This impressive meeting of the minds can go on for days.

Morning arbitration wouldn't even exist if not for the rising and shining of a certain perky little girl who insists on buzzing back and forth between both sides of our bed announcing her morning requests: cup of milk, commencement of cartoons, morning paper... "Is it me, or is she talking REALLY LOUD? Go away, Little Girl. We're asleep." But like a pesky fly, she grows more agitated the more I swat her away.

It won't be long now before her cries to "get up" are drowned out by a certain baby seagull squawking in his crib. And herein lies the dilemna. Baby Dude must be "gotten" which means someone has to slide out of three layers of 600 count Egyptian cotton, lift a fifty pound head from a hotel goosedown pillow, and slink down a long hallway on spaghetti noodle legs that definitely haven't gotten this memo yet.

Around here you have to earn the right to sleep in a few extra minutes. Like a couple of rebel cowboys in a showdown duel, we bring out all the big guns:

"I did it yesterday."
"I did it the three days before."
"I was up in the middle of the night with them."
"I have an important meeting today."
"I have to take them to Costco. Do you have any idea how much energy that requires?"

We are pathetic, I know. But occassionally, the comebacks reach a calibur of such genius proportions that the other must kowtow in an act of submissive, bootlicking reverence. Such was the case this morning after we had exhausted all the usual suspects.

Annoyed and clearly running out of ideas he fires back with a simple, "Rise!"

Shaking my head at his sad attempt I respond, "That's it? Oh, dear me. You're going to have to do A LOT better than that if you really want me to get up. If you'd been smart about it, you'd have said something more like, 'Rise, my beautiful butterfly, like the dawn on a clear blue day!'"

Without a moment's hesitation he quips, "Rise, my vampire of the coffin, like a bat out of a dark cave!"

No question, I would be getting Baby Dude this morning.