Rise and Shine

I'm virtually the first one up everywhere I regularly hang out.

At home, I rise just after the cat, usually between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning. On weekends, I can usually push this back till 8:00 for waking (as long as I try really hard to stay up the night before) and 9:00 for getting out of bed and starting breakfast. I have learned the hard way that my family does NOT like to eat much before 10:00AM.

At work, now that I'm in a different department, I'm the first one in on my floor - every day. I come in, turn on the coffee machine; though not being a coffee drinker, I daren't actually make the coffee, I'm fairly certain NO ONE would drink it. Since we have our tree up now I plug it in as well, and then I come to my office for about 2 hours of relatively quiet work. Before I came to this department I used to be able to say "relatively quiet and uninterrupted work" but no one here really interrupts me... isn't a change of scenery lovely?

Of course (and especially now that I'm older), first up usually means first down as well.

I leave the office at 3:30 most days (though now that it's the last month of the year and I have some vacation time to burn, I'm taking half days on Fridays - so today I'll be leaving at 11:00). It's a great plan for me... and I'm grateful beyond words that my bosses allow me to do it. Because I get here between 6:30 and 7:00 every morning, I am able to leave early enough that I have some REAL time to spend (in big chunks) with my daughter every afternoon/evening. I'd wake up at 4:30 or 5:00 every day forever if it meant extra hours with my little one.

My regular night bedtime is between 9:00 and 10:00 (except on Fridays and Saturdays when I desperately attempt to stay awake long enough to ensure I won't wake up before 8:00 the next morning) and one Tuesday a month - when I have a roomful of friends who can generally manage to keep me awake until sometime around midnight... even later if my husband and I want to talk about how things went.

ugh. I started writing about being up early for a reason... probably something about peace and quiet... but now I've forgotten, for sure, what the reason was, and I feel rather the dolt.

I think forgetfulness before caffeine is a side effect of being an early riser.