Good Morning, Insanity

I am not a morning person, as any of my former roommates can attest. I despise mornings. I can start a drywall project at 9 PM and go strong until 2 AM but getting up in the morning ranks right up there with wedgies and root canals. And the Lord, in His infinite sense of humor, paired me up with Mr. Morning (i.e. Darren). Darren gets up three days a week while it is still dark out to go play basketball. He leisurely drinks his coffee, showers, packs his lunch, gets devotional time in, and quietly (or sometimes not quite so quietly) slips off to work. The girls are still snuggled safe in their beds where thoughts of sugar (forget the plums) are still dancing in their heads.

Then within 15 minutes after he leaves, I get K crawling into bed with me, giving me morning breath kisses and poking her braids into my eyeballs. S hits the ground running and will read books while shifting from foot to foot and dancing. I lumber downstairs in my big white bathrobe so not ready to greet the day but I know I have a limited amount of time to get two squirrely girls through breakfast, teeth brushing, dressing, shoe finding, back packing, coat stuffing insanity in order to meet the bus.

While every other time of the day, they run at 95 MPH, they run at molasses speed in the morning and test me at every turn. They can't decide on what kind of cereal, or what to wear, or would rather spread toothpaste as a coating in the sink then put the brush in their mouth. They can't find their other mitten and they forgot that they needed a garden pea costume for the school play on vegetables that they forgot to tell me about. All the while, I am checking the clock to make sure we don't miss the bus because S's driver runs like a Swiss train - always on time.

I know I'm not the only one out there...my mom still has nightmares that she is pushing, pushing, pushing to get her kids out the door (and there were eight of us) and we are moving like we are in slow motion. She wakes up in a cold sweat. I think that qualifies for post traumatic stress disorder.

I'd love to be a morning person - get up and do yoga, eat an egg white omelet with mushrooms and peppers, take a shower without ANYONE banging on the door telling me who touched who or who took their "makeup" (chapstick) and won't give it back. I'd love to look like a million bucks walking out the door instead of a shlumpa-dinka in flannel pants and an oversized pullover of Darren's. I wish I was awake enough in the quiet hours of the morning to really dig into the Word instead of getting interrupted five times and thinking, "I feel like I've read this verse before."

I've tried going to bed earlier, drinking coffee (laced with so much Coffeemate liquid creamer it can hardly qualify as coffee), etc. but I still hate mornings. So until they invent a conveyer belt that will wake, feed, dress, brush teeth, and do hair for kids, this lumbering, white robed, morning hater will keep on keepin' on.