Mornings and Marriage
My parents and grandmother will arrive in T minus 4 hours.
That’s why on weeks like this one, it’s nice that I have a few writing deadlines that had to be met in advance.
And so, instead of whining about my (only partially successful) attempts to clean out my teenagers’ rooms so that guests could actually sleep in them without running out our front door screaming at two in the morning, or scrambling to have the guest bathroom repainted the day before my guests arrive, or coordinating a menu for seven for the next 4 days…
The full text of the column is below!
‘Til Dawn Do Us Part
I’m lying on my side, struggling to lift my head. My eyes are crusted shut. My ears are ringing. I have a faint memory of being beaten by a small gang of gnomes armed with gardening tools… or was that just a dream?
After several failed attempts, I’m finally able to pry my eyelids open with a thumb and forefinger. Watery sunlight streams through the curtains.
It slowly occurs to me that it is daybreak, and what I had at first thought was a yowling cat in heat outside my window is actually my son babbling on the baby monitor beside my bed. That’s my cue to get up. Dammit.
I struggle to my feet, find a robe and shuffle into it with the same casual grace as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Stumbling to my son’s room, I hoist him onto one hip and carry him into the den, where he affably takes a seat in his favorite child-sized armchair and waits for me to turn on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
This kid knows the drill. Give me a little time and I’ll be ready to read picture books and play cars and bake carrot bread until my fingers bleed. For the first hour of each day, though, I want to be left alone.
Obviously, I am not a morning person. I need time to let the caffeine from two cups of coffee slowly make its way to my brain, and time to simply come to terms with my unrelenting existence on this planet. Everyone in the house understands this about me, except for one person, who simply can’t bring himself to give me the mental morning space I so desperately crave…
“Well, good morning to you!” my husband booms, entering the kitchen a few minutes after I’ve made coffee and propped myself against the counter, eyes half-closed.
“Hi,” I mutter with a somewhat friendly grimace that takes all my effort to muster. As if on cue, Hubs wraps his arms around me in a zesty bear hug. After a beat, he holds me at arms-length and looks at me with concern.
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
Is something wrong? Is something wrong? You mean besides the fact that I have dragon breath, eye boogers, and a brand new pimple, not to mention the way someone apparently broke into our house overnight and replaced my brain with fiberfill, plus the obvious difficulty I’m having functioning on just six hours of sleep for the last eight nights in a row?
“Nothing’s wrong,” I say, my voice crackling with fatigue. “It’s just… morning.”
“Oh,” Hubs says uncertainly. “Because it seems like something’s wrong.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, just as I do every morning. “Give me a few minutes to wake up.”
Hubs nods, then practically dances over to the kitchen table, where he begins poring through the checkbook.
“Do you have a receipt for $74.87?” he asks. “Could you look in your wallet and see if you have it? I really need it as soon as possible.”
I sigh.
“Also,” he continues, “The girls have a doctor’s appointment after school today. Don’t forget. And I told Mike that we can have them over for dinner tomorrow night. Plus, I need to know whether you want to order the new lights for the kitchen this month or paint the upstairs bathroom. It’s one or the other and you have to decide right now”
“Can I just have a few minutes to wake up?” I croak. “Just a few minutes? Please?”
“I don’t understand why you’re so mean,” Hubs declares, shutting the checkbook.
I’ve always wondered why ‘mornings’ isn’t on the list of court-approved reasons for divorce, right up there with adultery and irreconcilable differences, because I don’t know of a single couple that doesn’t suffer from them.
My friend Kristen’s incessant AM chatter, for example, actually convinced her husband to cut her off from the coffeepot, just six weeks after they married. Repercussions from that act continue to this day.
“I called my husband at work the other morning to cry in frustration about the fact that our three-year-old just jumps out of bed talking and never stops,” she told me recently. “I lamented how I was contemplating poking my ears out with a fondue fork to give me some relief. ‘I know exactly how you feel, babe,’ he said. Was he trying to tell me something?”
My girlfriend, Tori, has her own morning marital troubles. “I manage to function on a subdued, slightly foggy, perhaps even ‘robotic’ level until the coffee kicks in,” she said of her typical morning behavior. “My husband, on the other hand, has the demeanor and attitude of a large mammal that has been unceremoniously and prematurely roused from hibernation.”
For most of us, the fog of disgruntlement eventually rises, right along with the sun. We see our spouses then in their true light, playing with the kids, sending funny text messages from work, doing little things to make our day easier. And if all goes well and the kids stay in their beds, we reach the point in the daily cycle that cancels out those first awful hours, and reminds us of why we married this person in the first place…
Night.
>Routinely. He gets up first, feeds the dogs and makes his lunch. I get up while he’s in the shower so that I can avoid “MORNING!” happiness. He gets the kid up and dressed while I’m in the shower – then they eat breakfast while I put my face on. He leaves and I eat while she putzes around putting her shoes on and watching whatever drek is on in the morning. 7:30 – hair, teeth, face and out for the bus and I’m off to work. I lay out her clothes and mine the night before so there’s no confusion. My lunch is packed the night before and her backpack is ready to go. We only have the one kid but I can’t function in disorganization so we have to do it this way or I’ll kill someone.
>I guess I have it made- he gets up at 2:30 to go to work, and the only person I have to deal with is Maddie and she hates mornings as much as I do. Have a great Thanksgiving!
>Ha! I got the “I don’t know why you are so mean” comment just this morning!
>We get up at different times. I usually wake up before he does and have time to ingest coffee before he appears. It also helps that there are no toddlers to hurry the get-out-of-bed process.I do suspect, though, that I might be the perky one by the time he staggers out of bed – but only because I’ve had at least 40 ounces of coffee.
>He gets up at 5 am leaves for work at 6 am. I get up at 6:45, get ready for work, kid gets ready for school and we leave. 🙂 It works out well. No grumpiness.
>My honey and I are both night owls, so we both dread mornings. We have a mutual understanding that neither one of us wants to be messed with. I wake up first to shower and wake him up after. We go about our routine in complete silence, he’ll usually stop me in my tracks and plant one on my forehead and occassionally a hug. We continue on in silence until he drops me off at work where we exchange kisses and wish each other a great day.For some it may be too much silence, but it works for us.
>How we handle it? Like two ships passing in the night, basically. I get up, work out, and shower all while Hubby and the boyz are still slumbering. By the time I’m completely done getting ready, Hubby has already packed the lunches/snacks and gotten breakfasts. And then? After kisses and quick snuggles, I’m off to catch the 7:09 train and away from home for the next 12 hours. It blows.
>Well at least 6 mornings a week I am up after my husband has already left for work. Some weeks it’s 7 mornings, which is ideal because on the 1 morning he IS home when I wake up…disaster usually follows. I am NOT a morning person, he is. I am mean and snotty and bitchy…oh how I could go on! It usually ends up in a fight and us not talking to one another until after lunch! Fun!
>We have a 3.5 year old who has slept all the way through the night maybe a handful of times in his life. We also have a 4 month old. You can probably guess how we handle mornings, especially the early hours we are up tending to the kids. Our rule is that anything that is said before 7 or 8am is not taken seriously and is forgotten by the time the day starts. More often then not, it’s him forgetting my behavior. He deals with less sleep better than myself!
>Oh, funny. I hate mornings. I keep a quote from G.K. Chesterton in my bathroom: Daybreak is a neverending glory; morning is a neverending nuisance.My husband used to be a morning person. Until he married me. Actually, it’s odd because while I hate mornings and don’t usually think all that well until I’ve had about two cups of coffee, I’m not as grumpy and I can leap out of bed at a moment’s notice to deal with a child. Hubby loves mornings but is really slow to wake up and is kinda crabby. We mostly avoid each other in the morning. I get up first and shower and then get my son breakfast while Hubby showers and gets dressed. Then he takes son to school and goes to work and leaves me to deal with the other kids. Fortunately, even though my 5 year old is a high verbal, she’s not a morning person either and is usually pretty quiet for the first hour she’s up.And Musicjunkie, your morning quiet seems wonderful to me. I’d be happy with that. 🙂
>I am definately NOT a morning person, it’s dangerous to speak to me before 10 am. My husband is a VERY smart man….if I don’t speak before he leaves for work, he doesn’t speak to me. If I speak to him then he’s allowed to talk all he wants. I try at all costs to avoid speaking, though I will kiss him goodbye and yell “be careful, I love you!” as he goes out the back door.
>I am a total bitch (only in the?) mornings.Hubby knows to get up and out early.If my day starts (and by that I mean if my eyes open unvoluntarily) badly – it stays that way.
>I was terrified as summer drew to a close and kindergarten loomed over my head. Rising at 6:30 AM is not my idea of fun, but more importantly, I was quite sure that I was going to traumatize my daughter because I.am.not.a.morning.person…..period.I never have been. In fact, I slept through the night at 2 weeks old, never got up for morning cartoons and the only way I’ve ever seen 5 am is if I actually stayed up until 5 am. On an extended family vacation this year, in August, I lamented deeply to everyone who would listed to me about my “morning” fears. It’s turned out better than I thought, thank the LORD! We formed a very nice routine for school mornings. For some reason I’m able to handle it, which is downright weird.The alarm goes off at 6:50 (amended from 6:30), we both get up, hubby makes coffee and our daughter’s breakfast. I stumble to her room and wake up the princess (who has NO issues in the morning thank GOD). I get her dressed, do her hair and escort her to the kitchen. Hubby joins her for breakfast, I suit up the backpack and get some coffee. When she’s done eating, she brushes her teeth, gets her coat on. We carpool, so either hubby drives or the other family. When hubby is out of town (which can be frequently) I add 10 mins to he morning routine and do it myself. Thankfully, I made the decision to pack her lunch, do what I need in her backpack and pick out her clothes the night before. Nothing is left to possibly screw up the routine. LOLI can’t say that I’m exactly pleasant, but I’m not scary either. Mostly that’s out of respect for my daughter and not wanting her day to start off badly.I have wished on every star that I see fall, to be a morning person. It’s not pleasant to wake up grumpy and mad at the world.As for hubby, we don’t talk much in the morning. He knows me and leaves me alone. 🙂
>Oh I am NOT a morning person at all! It’s a wonder why hubs still loves me. He has that annoying cheerfulness in the morning. I love him anyway.
>I hit the snooze button about 8 times. Then, I get up first, get my shower, give the Mrs. a good morning kiss and a cheery good morning (that I deserve a thrashing for, I am sure). She gets her shower and I empty the dishwasher, get the lunches ready, then we (usually) have 5 minutes of coffee. She will unload the dryer, I fold and she reloads the washer and drier (it’s neverending. Then get the kiddos up, dressed, breakfasted and she takes them to school.If I have to get up with the toddler in the middle of the night, or some other such nocturnal disruption (multiple phone calls on call), she will get up first.This is all assuming neither one of us has to get to work earlier than normal.It works well for us.
>I'm not married, but my various roomies &/or significant others through the years all quickly learned that I do not wake up cheerfully or in a friendly fashion. My mother likes to tell the story of the time she sent Daddy in to get toddler me up for the day. Apparently I snarled, kicked, and bit him. She says he appeared in the kitchen doorway, ashen-faced, and told her to go get the demon up herself.It's pointless to talk to me before I have caffeine. My favorite college roomie had a foolproof way of coping with me in the morning. She would carefully balance a glass of tea on the nightstand by my bed, move to the doorway (we had a pretty small room), and poke me with a baseball bat held at arm's length. I'd flail about swearing madly, she'd yell "morning, there's your tea" and bolt out the door to safety.It's sad that I'm admitting this anywhere, let alone on the internet.
>i can sleep in or get up at the ungodley hour of 3:30 a.m. That is because my cat ( my kid wouldn’t dare to try it) wants his breakfast. there are 4 cats in all and they play follow the leader…the alpha male. He gets on my nightstand and starts knocking stuff onto the floor, this morning he actually managed to turn on the lamp ! can’t put them outside, they claw at the doors of screens until we let them in, same thing goes with our bedroom doors…. there is absolutely no way they let you sleep! when my kids were litle i would say ok i’ll be up in a minue and then go back to sleep…they learned to fix their own breakfast which proves they are smarter than my cats….just a tad, tho
>eric does mornings…always
>My hubby took a vacation day today, the day before Thanksgiving. That was a real recipe for disaster. His morning routine was non-existent while mine was multiplied exponentially (prepare family for travel while leaving the house in condition for guests when we return…YIKES!) He had a little extra cheer in his Grape Nuts while I had double the piss in my Post Toasties! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
>I roll out of bed between 6 and 6:30, with usually 6 or less hours of sleep. I tell my husband to get up and help me get the (4) kids ready for school. He says okay and then goes back to sleep.So I start waking kids up, making sure the two youngest get dressed, brush teeth and hair, get shoes on, get backpacks and coats, etc., while reminding the two oldest to get on the ball, we only have X amount of time left, don’t forget to feed the dog, wear a coat today, etc. I sometimes end up yelling and it’s not a pretty scene.Meanwhile, my husband is still in bed, asleep. I leave at 7:20 to drive the kids to school, and hubby gets up shortly after we leave, gets ready in like ten minutes, and drives three minutes to work. So, I’m usually not in a good mood in the mornings.
>Mornings are rough here too. Hubs is a chronic sleep button pusher. I’m a light sleeper and therefore the sleep button is my nemesis. I want to get all high quality sleep and then just get on with getting up (not that I like getting up). Hubs throws a wrench in that plan at least 2 days per week by setting the alarm 30 minutes earlier than he intends to get up, and then making sure my last 30 minutes of sleep are total crap. But I’m not too bitter about it. Obviously.
>LOL…back when it mattered, the difference between my and my fiancee’s start times was stark enough to be more of a burden than I realized at the time.Now, my 0230 start bothers no one, since my pet rock is a sound sleeper 😉
>My husband and I have a mixed marriage. I’m one of those irritatingly cheerful people who wake instantly at 5 a.m. I don’t need an alarm clock. I’m almost never groggy. My eyelids spring open and I almost jump out of bed. My husband abuses the snooze button on his alarm clock, sits on the side of the bed with his head in his hands, and moans for 10 minutes.I learned years ago that to save my marriage I need to leave the bedroom immediately upon waking. I go downstairs and spend some blissful quiet time reading, studying, praying, etc.–no coffee needed.My 15-year-old son is much like me. I rarely have to tell him to get out of bed. My 13-year-old is worse than his father. I have to get downright mean with him to get him out of bed so he won’t be late for school. I usually stand in the doorway of his room and sing “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma! I’ve been told that I have a lovely soprano voice, but for some reason, he doesn’t enjoy hearing it in the morning.
>Most days I am up first with the kids. We have a silent morning… short of a few mumbled “G’mornin’s” we are quiet. The Weather Chanel is on tv on the lowest possible volume, the kids are quietly eating their waffles, lights are dim. Sort of like the womb. On the few days that hubs is up with us its “SPORTS CENTER”!!! TOP VOLUME!!! DAH DAH DAH… DAH DAH DAH… and the talking…. Sweet Jesus, the TALKING… so what’s everyone doing today? Where ya going, what’er ya doin’, how’s school, what’cha eatin there, is it cold out today, have you seen my keys, how about my sweatshirt… all before 6:30. OMFG! STFU!!!!
>My husband and I have a routine that works. I’m not exactly a morning person, but I’m not exactly not. My best friend IS NOT a morning person….but we all know and love that about her. It’s something her husband has learned to respect (after much arguing and finally a sit-down convo about it…which may have included a-v to finally get him to understand how to comply). She’s fine after an hour or two, but don’t look in her direction before then.
>My husband learned early in our marriage not to yank my chain first thing in morning after I tossed a cupof hot tea in his direction.He is very good about dealing with the kids on weekend AMs so I can sleep in a bit.
>Hubby is one of those perky morning people that should be shot. I am a night owl in the extreme. We get together for lunch alot. Mornings around here: Hubby is up and at ’em around 5 when the cat, who would starve before trying it on me, wakes him up. Rousts out the kids for showers and breakfast. I am woken up quietly by someone holding coffee around 6:30 for bye bye kisses and daily reminders (My brains only required function before 8. And even then I have to keep running the list through my head as I go to sleep). Bus arrives at 6:45 Hubby leaves at 6:46. Small fry and I do about an hour of TV/Books/snuggle time while Mommy downs the rest of the pot of coffee and we’re off and running.