from the pen of icarus blake

15 minutes before I have to get my brain up and moving for a 2-part science lesson on fake dinosaur tracks for an eighth grader.

This gets me up at 7, bleary eyed and exhausted from a creaking bed, my dog confused and offended that he must begin his daily herding of humans a full hour before he normally does. I make my coffee, and I sit down, and I review my lesson materials, and I look forward to the nap I’ll inevitably take around 11.

The 7 AM wake-up isn’t so bad. I don’t have to get dressed, I sit and chat with my student in my pajamas and a hoodie and try not to gesture to enthusiastically with a mug of coffee. It’s nothing, permission for eccentricity first thing in the morning. Nothing, that is, compared to the odd day where I cover the Sunday shift at work.

I work a 12:30-9 slog through the busiest parts of the lab day that nonetheless leaves me the slow morning to myself and an allowance of at least 2 hours lazing about in sweatpants before I have to be a person. I am the only one who likes this, as my coworkers flee for the 10-7 and 9-5 shifts as they open and leave me the hinge upon which the late shift turns. The Sunday shift is early and short — a cushy gig, all things considered.

And yet I awake at 5, creaking. I drive in dead with the sunrise. I do my work. I drive home. I collapse. I spend the next three days picking through my ruined sleep schedule, missing appointments and crashing into 6 hour naps.

All this to say that I’m begging you not to make me leave the house before 9 in the morning.