Becoming a Morning Person

As many of you know, I don't really do mornings.  Seriously.  The 2 weeks of the summer where I had to get up at 6:00 to pick raspberries (actually I had to get up earlier, we had to "be in the bush by 6") were pretty much torture.  AND some years, we'd have such a great crop that it would go over 2 weeks.  I tell you what, getting up at the I-can-barely-see-it's-still-so-dark crack of dawn to go stand in a wet bush (stupid dew) gingerly picking red berries, and keeping your eyes out for the multitude of spiders, leaf bugs, and grasshoppers that were just waiting to attack you, thus causing you to jump and spill some of your berries, that then caused a panic, because if Dad saw them, you were surely in trouble, and then you REALLY wished you were still in bed and this nightmare was just a dream, was not something this bucketeer enjoyed.

L5-L7 can all tell you stories of me getting up for scriptures, not really paying attention while we were reading (but I got very good at my 6 times tables) and then going back to bed, and not surfacing until after 8.  Yes, you heard me, after 8.  That was some major sleeping in at my house growing up.  My Dad was a really big fan of the whole "early to bed, early to rise" thing.

How I got through 3 years of early morning drama rehearsals, I will never be able to tell you.  But I did, armed with pop tarts, or sometimes a Popsicle for breakfast, I would walk on stage and pretty much dance in my sleep.  I wasn't popin' but my breakfast was!  (I know, super lame joke, it just had to be made)

I remember one morning during my short stay at the MTC, of my alarm going off.  I rolled over to press snooze, it was 6:10 AM.  I wasn't thinking about how great it was to be a missionary, and that I got to preach the Gospel.  I was thinking, "I have to wake up this early every day for the next 18 months.  WHY did I do this to myself!"  I then started to wonder if it was really worth it.  And it was, but that morning, I wanted to become apostate and run far, far away!

Fast forward a few years to last summer.  Hod and I both had a not fun job that paid well.  I was on a rotating shift where every 3 weeks it was my turn to be to work by 6:30.  Pretty lame.  And then it happened, Hod got moved to the early shift.  Now, Hod, bless his super attractive heart, is not a morning person.  I personally believe that some little gremlin comes in the night and super glues his back to the bed.  That is how hard it is for him to get up.  As a result, when Hod had to be to work at 6:30, I had to wake up at 6:10 and call him to get him out of bed.  Roughly translated, this means I never got to sleep in.  But I did it, for Hod.

And it set a pattern.  Now, every morning, my alarm goes off, so I can wake my dear husband up, to help him get the last of his homework done, or to get him to work on time.  (As a side note, I am SO glad that I didn't let him take a 7:30 class.  I would have wanted to spit on him every morning.)

I have friends that get up during the 6:00 hour every day.  I don't know how they do it.  7:30 is being our earliest.  Every day, the alarm goes off and I have to shove Hod out of bed.  Every day it is a struggle.  "Just 10 more minutes?   Just 2 more minutes?"

I'm not really a morning person yet.  I feel like I'm just acting.  And so it goes.  Every day.  Probably for the rest of my life.  I know once I have kids I'll be lucky to get to 7:30.  Maybe someday I will actually make the transition to the ever elusive "Morning Person".