On The Virtues Of Sleeping In

I am fiercely protective of my reputation as an early riser.  Just as the Kitten seems to attach general human weakness to a dependence on air-conditioning, so too do I tend to view those who loll about in bed with circumspection (the Kitten of course, being a famous loll-er).  I arise these days generally around 0500 to begin my days labors, and that includes most weekends.  Sometimes it is straight to the blog, others it is directly to paid work.  Either way, I greet the sun with a coffee in my hand and the smug satisfaction of someone who is pegging the productivity scale.

Most loll-ers will now and again confess to wishing they were early risers, thinking (with some justification) that the world was passing them by whilst they luxuriate, and that they could be so much more productive if only they were to put those few hours to work each day.  Very few, if any, actually ever become an early riser, so the lure seems only to extend as far as pitiful attempts at social acceptance.  That said, I honestly don't think they envy us.  I think they talk about being an early riser as if they were a successful banker living in a 5000 square foot home who wistfully dreams of what it would have been like if he had only taken that teaching job in Appalachia.  Admiration yes, but no real chance of going for it.

We early risers on the other hand?  I think we all secretly yearn to be loll-ers.  I think we--who begin yawning each night around 9:30 whilst our more nocturnally oriented cohabitators are just picking up steam--would all trade places if we could just rip off a sleep-in until noon with some frequency.  The plain truth of the matter is, we generally can't.  While a loll-er can set an alarm and wake, an early-riser cannot achieve the opposite.  Once the first rays of light enter the room, game over.  You can sit in bed for six hours if you like, but you'll not be doing any real sleeping.

The Kitten and I have been discussing this lately.  I slipped up and said one night recently that I was going to sleep in as long as I could the next day.  When she asked when that would be, I guessed seven, or seven-thirty.  "Why so early?" she asked.  I pointed to the windows in our room without shades and reminded her of her love of morning sun, the way it blasts into our room (with seemingly no impact on her sleep).  "Why don't you wear one of those sleep masks?" was her response.

Truth be told, I have several, acquired during international airline flights.  I don't know where they are, though I suspect they are in one of the moving boxes stored in my storage unit; you know, the ones they go in and open up when you die that haven't been entered in 35 years.  There, they will also find most of the notes taken in my undergraduate and graduate courses, plaques from all the ships and commands I served in, and possibly some incriminating letters from my 20's which bespeak a more actively diverse dating life than the one I currently manage...

So last night, there it was.  This ridiculous pink, fluffy eye mask, looking like something Eva Gabor would have worn to bed on Green Acres.  Thinking there would be no social ramifications to my wearing it, I agreed, in hopes that it might extend my sleep this morning.  Well, it did.  I woke at 0930, not to the light of the morning, but to the voices of the Kitten and Kittens chattering away across the hall in one of the Kitten's rooms.  As I blearily stumbled over (why do I stumble MORE blearily when I've had more sleep?) to greet them, the girls burst out laughing at me, recounting an earlier vignette in which the Kitten led them to the room to behold the great, fleshy beast sleeping with the pink eye-shade, with a black cat perched atop his hind quarters, also sleeping.  Great fun for all, and with my added four and a half hours of sleep, I smiled numbly, thinking seriously about hopping back in bed.