Every morning it’s the same.
- Wake up sometime between 4:30 and 5:15 (the latter if I somehow manage to sleep until the alarm goes off, which is cause for great rejoicing)
- Take a shower
- Make a cup of tea
- Morning prayers
After that, it’s time to wake up the teenager. And that’s where it all goes bad. He sleeps through any alarm his phone has to offer.
- Wake up TheKid
- Preheat oven for bacon, line pan with foil, set out bacon, place in oven
- Start the music–loud music that I love but he hates; wake TheKid again
- Make a cup of coffee
- Wake TheKid again. Sing loudly with the music, especially the nonsense syllables in “Good Morning Starshine”
- Repeat as necessary (and it’s almost always necessary)
TheKid finally stumbles out of his room, hands me his insulin pump to put on the charger while he showers, and heads upstairs. Forward progress, you’d think.
You’d think wrong.
- Finish shower, reattach insulin pump, go back to bed
- Bacon is ready
- Walk into kitchen, put bagel in toaster, go back to bed
- Bagel is ready
- Stall for 5 more minutes while bagel cools off, get up and commence mad scramble to make the bus
This process begins at 6 AM. The bus arrives at 7:40.
It’s inefficient and annoying and never ends well. I wind up yelling and nobody’s happy, because yelling cancels out the endorphins gained from belting out “Good Morning Starshine” in harmony and holding all the long notes.
After TheKid gets on the school bus today, I’m going to start googling alarm-clock solutions. Maybe a drone I can fly from the kitchen to his room, one strong enough to steal his blanket. He can give it to me for Christmas. Because this just isn’t working out for me, and I’m tired of spending an hour and a half every morning fighting.
