Why I Never Hit the Snooze Button

The short story:

 

 

The rest of the story:

I never hit the snooze button. Ever. Nobody in my family does. The Walters family considers the inability to get the heck out of bed to be a pretty major character flaw. On weekdays, I wake up the instant my alarm goes off and am dressed and out the door with coffee in hand inside of five minutes.

And then there's Seth. He's had an adversarial relationship with morning wake-ups since I've known him (and, according to his Mom, since birth.) It's only gotten worse with TBI, and the buckets-full of drugs he was on as a result of getting blown up. He has to set three or four alarms to get up and get to physical therapy, and I suspect that that trick only works some of the time. Because of his many other fine qualities, I've managed to overlook this imperfection. I even occasionally feel bad for making fun of how groggy and disoriented he is when he has to wake up early.

And now I should probably take it all back, because it turns out that I'm wired exactly the same way, only backwards. I cannot function after even one tiny snooze button smack.

This morning, my alarm went off before dawn as usual, and it was just so nice in our bedroom, with the sound of the rain hitting the deck roof and a sleepy Seth next to me. He did not want me to get out of bed, and told me so. I don't know who can resist a snuggly husband on a rainy morning, but it's not me. So against my better judgment, I hit snooze.

I woke up ten minutes later, late and frantic. I threw on running clothes, grabbed my stuff, dropped it all in a puddle, and- having forgotten my coffee- raced for the door. Halfway to work, I noticed I had forgotten my phone. "Terrific," I thought. "I guess I'll google map the address I need to be at for dinner, and make wild guesses as to the traffic situation. I can do this."

I proceeded to cause a minor traffic jam at the Belvoir gate, since in my haste I had neglected to take my ID card out of my uniform pocket, which was hanging in the backseat, requiring me to get out to retrieve it and seriously angering my fellow drivers.

The skies opened up about halfway through my run, and I learned that I had also failed at hasty running shorts- selection. The pair I had grabbed was a size too big and one of a number I had pulled the drawstring out of the last time I put on a few pounds, figuring I no longer needed help keeping them up. That was apparently a few pounds ago, and when my shorts got soaked in the downpour they inched down my waist, eventually requiring me to run with one hand holding up my traitorous waistband. At the big intersection near my office, I wiped the rain from my face with my shorts-holding hand without thinking, and they fell down to my knees before I caught them. I hoped desperately that I had not just mooned someone I worked with. Fingers crossed.

I discovered the final disaster when I made it back to the gym to shower and pulled my uniform out of my car. There was nothing underneath it, and it hit me: I had left my boots beside the door. In Bethesda. This was a major problem. I definitely did not have two hours to make the roundtrip home, and I had to be in uniform for a ceremony this afternoon. I headed to Mom and Dad's, who always save the day, and luckily Dad had an extra pair in the upstairs closet. I wear a men's 5.5 in combat boots. I think Dad's are a 10. I look like Bozo the Clown, and you can hear me coming from down the hallway. My office has been in stitches all morning. I think it's seriously hurting productivity around here.

And that's why I never hit snooze.
Hope everyone else's Friday is going better than mine, at least in the shoe and shorts departments.