Dreaming of Zihuatanejo

Today, the roomie & colleague & ride is at home, waiting for a new mattress to be delivered. Had to hitch a ride with the boss. The icing on the cake – the boss leaves for work at 6:30 AM so he can drop his kid off at school. He picked me up at around 6:45 AM. If you take gosh-awful daylight friggin’ savings, 5:45 AM. As you may have caught on, am most definitely NOT a morning person.

While waiting for the ride to arrive, I try reading. I have half-read books strategically stashed all over the house, so I can always reach for something, no matter where I am. I try Atwood’s Good Bones and Simple Murders. At some point, as I listlessly move about the house, I pick up Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Authors I find scintillating by moonlight, even twilight, fail to please at the crack of dawn.

Switch on the TV. I HATE watching TV in the morning. I detest all morning shows – filled with bright / cheerful types gushing on about whatever the hell it is they gush on about. Turn to cable. Pause for a while on FX – Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Are they kidding? At 6 in the morning? HBO – Mad City and a bunch of other movies that would make any self-respecting insomniac kill himself. What audience are they trying to cater to at that hour, I wonder. Am pretty sure that the ‘early to bed / early to rise’ crowd would be as interested in Mad City as the insomniacs and the am-drunkenly-just-about-making-it-back-home crowd.

During the ride, with whatever handful of neurons which are up & working at that hour, brief, very brief thoughts flit through the brain:

- Please God, please¸ no conversation

- Aah! Shiny things! Oooh – that’s the sun getting reflected off windows / glassy structures on them building thingees… Kinda psychedelic, really. Is this why the “morning people” like mornings?

- Is the sun this orange? Really? All the time?

- Why is there a traffic jam at this hour? On the “freeway”? Isn’t this the “debauched west”? Folks are supposed to be nursing hang-overs at this hour, not cheerily driving to work, or wherever the hell it is people go to at 7:00 in the morning…

Reach work. Cannot believe am actually at my desk by 7:40. It feels like I only just left. Did I leave at all? Oh yeah I did. I watched TV last night, didn’t I…

At 9, am still in that twilight zone between wakefulness & brain dead-ness. So I go down to Starbucks. Get myself a Vanilla Latte. Detest coffee (am a Chai person), but see that it has its uses. Coffee does not help. Just makes me feel full, and somewhat nauseous, as it always does. And I have the rest of the day to go! Yippee!

# posted by DoZ @ Wednesday, August 31, 2005