The Early Time

I had to be at work early today, filling in for someone who had rear-ended someone in a traffic accident yesterday. I didn't sleep very well last night. If I put my feet under the covers, they got too hot. If I stuck them outside of the covers, they got too cold. Finally, at 5:45 a.m., I said fuggit and got out of bed.

It was still dark outside, a sign that the autumn season is beginning today. I turned on the kitchen light and began boiling some water for oatmeal and tea. The cats, walking softly with bleary eyes, came out of whatever dark corners wherein they had been sleeping and looked to me for some breakfast. I got them and myself set up, and then I went into the office, booting the computer up so that I could check my fantasy baseball scores.

I am not a morning person. I don't mean that as in I'm gripey and unconscious if it's before 10 a.m., though that's not too far from the truth. It's just that it's rare that I am moving about in the six o'clock hour. If somehow a graph mapping out during what hours I've been awake the most was made, you would see that the five and six a.m. hours would be denoted with very small bars. I would say that three and four in the morning would even rank ahead, just because there's been plenty of times where I've stayed up that late. Since it's rare that I see this part of the day, it's always a novelty for me.

My eyelids weren't heavy, but they did feel thick. Every headline on Yahoo's front page was new. I could hear my neighbor's dog being let out for his morning pee. As the hour progressed, I could hear the steady hum of traffic getting louder and louder. I remembered how when I lived in the second-story apartment off of Kavanaugh years ago, it was always easy to tell that the day had started when the joggers showed up and the city buses drove by.

I'll tell you what's depressing about these early hours.

It's being in a dark hotel room, under that polyester blanket, hearing the water pipes in the wall whistling from the other guestrooms and the sound of the vaccuum cleaner being pushed down the hall. Like a slow-motion dopplar effect, the *knock, knock* Room Service? keeps getting louder and louder. Every breath taken is filled with freon and stale cigarette smoke.

Ugh. I hate those mornings. But today, the morning was quite nice. Here's looking forward to many more this fall.