"Good" Morning

Drool was sliding peacefully between my lips when I heard Melissa moan, "Phil, will you get up with the kids?"

"Get up? It's still night right? No, it's just another pre-dawn morning with two humans under 6." David, with blanket in hand, was present and accounted for by a brain hemorraging whine originating from his impossibly small mouth (for the volume he produces anyways).

So I did one of those drool slurp things I've mastered, knowing I'd need all the fluids I could get this AM. And after cursing myself for being so stupidly self-sacrificial, I rubbed my eyes until I could see blurry shapes and said in a completely defeated and pitiful voice, "Yes, I'll do it."

I managed to roll/fall/curse again out of bed. Then I dragged David down the stairs, still pleading for Mommy, when he informed me that he wanted to get dressed. I patiently explained to him that "IT WAS STILL DARK! How are we supposed to get dressed in the dark?"

I knew this would just end up leading to more whining, and my growing morning-hangover (I hardly ever drink, but I always wake up with a hang-over. I think this is unfair.) was pleading with me just to do whatever the "little devil" (I don't really think of him this way. Just in the mornings.) wanted provided he stopped making that brain-getting-pierced-with-icicles-noise. So we fumbled around getting clothes in the dark, and at one point David dissappeared entirely only for me to realize he had simply left, gone on a 3 year's old errand of spontanaity. I hate spontanaity in the mornings.

So I sat there, in the dark, wondering why Melissa and I couldn't have just adopted a couple of 10 yr. olds that could take care of themselves and possibly me. Alas.

David eventually returned and we fumbled our way downstairs, AGAIN, and I poured cereal into a bowl of milk, poured him a juice full of glass and slapped my weary end down next to him.

Thinking of us in that pre-dawn morning light, we must have looked like a couple of bums, silouhetted against the kitchen window like in an alley - all we needed was an alley-cat routing through garbage. Of course one of the bums would be really small, awefully chipper, and the only thing noting him as a possible bum would be his eating cereal with hands and shirt on backwards. The bigger one, however, would be classic bum - hair totally disheveled, unshaven, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, eyes blood-shot right through, with a look on his face that just begs the question, "Why life now?"

The morning continued... I found myself building marble towers, hangover still chastizing me for all the pops of marbles hitting plastic and little-boy-whoops. Then I found myself wrestling on our bed while Mommy showered. I was basically sort of trying to sleep while tickling, throwing, bucking and having David and now Teya jump on my back for fun. It was the worst nap I've ever had.

God bless mornings. He better. Otherwise I would never get through. So to everyone out there in cyber-space reading this, "Morning." I hope he doesn't bless yours like he blessed mine. But now that I have coffee in my system am safely at Starbucks, I think I'll miss these mornings some day. Plus I'd do it all over again, "I guess so honey, if I have to. Yes? Crap."