Some updates:
My grandmother has been back from the nursing home for about a week now, driving everyone crazy with her stubborn resolve to change very few habits that landed her there in the first place. It makes me wonder what kind of old person I will be. My son is observing all of these multi-generational dynamics firsthand, so he will have several examples on which to draw when I likely become a cantankerous octogenarian.
As for my old house, there is a clean, smooth, beautiful new sub-floor in my bathroom. And that's about it. I'm still waiting on a new ceiling in the guest bedroom, but it isn't waiting to spread yucky brown leaks over more and more tiles.
I want to take a nap. For months.
I am entirely peeved at the powers that be who extended Daylight Savings for a whole week this year. For one, it didn't even work. No one saved any significant amount of energy. So what if we had more light in the evening? We had to burn more wattage to see where the hell we were going in the morning!
My alarm goes off in the morning, I open my eyes and observe that it's still pitch black outside, I fling the alarm clock across the room, and I close my eyes.
This isn't right. Human beings should be smart enough to wake with the sunrise. Oh, but there are deadlines to meet and deals to grab on the tick of the clock, not the rotation of the earth. Thus, I have to keep waking up in the dark.
I get zero sympathy from my family on this.
My son is transitioning into hormonal stages that desperately want to turn him into a groggy teen who would rather sleep in than go to school. Contrast this with the 6-year-old who would always wake before we did and jump around by 5:30 a.m. asking, "Can I go yet? Can I go yet? Can I go yet?" (Ahem, schools, learn some biology and make the younger grades go earlier, not later. Morons.) He thinks I have it good with my alarm clock and not a parent who hollers upstairs and flicks the light.
Speaking of parents, my father is hauling his first load of dry cement before 6 a.m. in the dark and has to put up with other sleepy drivers on their morning commutes without killing any of them. My mother never sleeps and is working two jobs in the church and social justice, so she is changing people's lives by the time I hit the snooze button.
My brother is blazing his headlights on a highway long before any of them, traveling to wherever his crane is precariously perched in the region to hurry up and wait for some job site foreman to tell him where to lift a beam or a basket full of men. He's sick of waking up and going to work in the dark too, but with the dough he's earning he'll be able to retire at 35. Punk.
So, while whiny little Rebecca is complaining about her perfectly reasonable waking hour, husband Ted is snoring away happily, on a second shift work schedule that allows him the benefits of staying up all night doing whatever he damn pleases, sleeping all day for as long as he damn pleases, and getting up whenever he damn well feels like it to have as much time as he damn well needs to get ready for work.
Do I sound bitter? See, I need a nap.







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