early mornings

when tim and i got married, i would sleep in until 11am or so on the weekend. tim would be up between 7 - 8am. if he made any noise between 7 - 11am, (before i got up) i would be choked. poor guy. after about a year of this, i started getting up earlier because it seemed like that's what grown ups did.

i was always amazed at people who were up at crazy hours (like 8am) and mowing their lawn or hammering something that seemed to need 100 nails. who WERE these people? go back to bed!

one summer, i was sleeping and it was only about 7:30am so tim was sleeping too and the doorbell rang. it didn't just ring once, it rang about 10 times quickly - like you'd ring it if you were pranking some house in the middle of the night. i was like, "what the heck?" and rolled over - i wasn't going down to open the door at 7:30am. then the person rang it again like a crazy man. i was so angry, i got up, threw on a sweatshirt, opened the door and it was the neighbour from behind our house. we'd never met before. i opened the door and said, "it's SEVEN THIRTY!" and i burst into tears. he was like, "sorry about that. i just wanted to let you know that there are some guys here to cut our tree in our backyard. some of the branches hang into your yard - could they come into your yard to cut them?" of course, that was fine with me. i went back upstairs to bed but the sound of chainsaws outside our window made it a little bit difficult to sleep. i was SO annoyed to be missing a morning of sleeping in during summer vacation.

fast forward 4 years and 7:30am is now what we consider to be sleeping in. when ben asks to go outside, he knows that my response will be "you have to wait until 8 o'clock". sometimes that means waiting 2 hours before leaving the house. once he gets outside, he's loud and often whiny. if you are my neighbour and trying to sleep in, i'd just like to apologize for now being "those people".