Rise and Shine!

When I was growing up, I lived with my grandparents for a few of my formative years. Just about every single morning, they were out of bed before the crack of dawn. I thought, "It must be their generation". Nobody it their right mind would ever want to get up that early, day in, and day out. On your days off, EVERYONE wants to sleep a little longer. Not my grandparents. As much as I hate to admit it, the older I get, the less time I can physically spend in bed. I set my alarm for 6AM, and probably 25% of the time it actually goes off to wake me up. I have slid into a creature of deeply entrenched habit. Now, I'm normally awakened by the fact that someone turned the plumbing on, and I have to get out of bed to relieve myself. I'm sure my wife is thrilled to hear this tidbit of info, rather than me sleeping thru this sensation;) Of course, this occurs approximately 5 - 10 minutes BEFORE my alarm is set to go off. So I start my day a little grumpy, having been denied these few minutes of precious sleep. If my morning 'nature's call', does not nudge me out of bed, then my aching back tells me its had enough of horizontal, and wants to be vertical for awhile. So out of bed I drag myself, just to make the aches and pains subside. Last Saturday, I thought, "Finally, my chance to sleep in awhile". I had nothing really pressing planned for early in the morning, so a few extra winks were on the agenda. I purposely do NOT set my alarm on the weekend, because there are NO 'tile emergencies' on the weekend. Honestly people, there are NO 'tile emergencies' ever! Don't try to convince me or yourself otherwise. That's a rant for another day. Back to Saturday morning. Snoozing along, catching up on some REM, no twinges, urges, aches, or pains shoving my carcass out of bed, then I gently, and refreshed from my slumber, awake fully aware, and ready for the day. A good mood came over me, thinking to myself, "Finally, a good night's sleep"! I roll over to bask in the fact I've slept well beyond what my body normally allows, to check the time on my alarm clock, and do some quick math, to see how much sleep I gained, to apply that toward my deficit. 6:05AM. #@!$%

In Plain Sight

I have a friend named Tom who has a unique ability. From time to time, I find myself in the car, on a little bit of a road trip with him. He happens to have a couple of good fishing holes south of the border. I'm talking the Nebraska border. But Tom has this keen sense about spotting certain wildlife, and this is done even while driving. I can be staring out the window, gazing off into a corn field, and Tom will blurt out 'deer', or 'turkey'. I'm in a state of confusion and asking, "Where, where"? Then the deer, or turkey, or pheasant, or ground squirrel, or dragonfly, come into plain? view. I asked him once, how he has such a keen eye for wildlife? First, he grew up in the country, and has trained his eye to spot it at a young age. He said once he exits the city, he has an image in his mind, and any movement, or slight discrepancy on the horizon, triggers his response. I've tried to pay attention to this while driving on road trips, but growing up a city kid, I'm not sure what a deer looks like. Of course, this happens to me other than excursions through the countryside. I can open my tool box, and stare for three minutes, looking for a tool hidden in plain sight. It happened to me this morning. I opened the fridge looking for jelly, and stood there, just like my kids do, staring into a camouflaged environment, while letting the 'cold' flow freely out of the appliance, thus warming my food, and cooling my house, all while running my electric bill up. So I finally found the jelly, hiding somewhat behind the eggs, sitting very still, hoping to not be noticed. But since I've been training my mind and my eye, and the two are now in 'sync', there was no way it was going to escape my notice. OK, admittedly, I still have a lot of fine tuning. I think some people just have 'it', and some people (me) don't. I'm just fortunate I've never challenged Tom to a game of 'slug bug'. Chances are, I would probably notice the deer.