Things I've learned since going cold turkey...

...with the snooze button.

But first, some happy news.

My brother, Nathan (apparently known to everyone outside my family as "Nate"), is officially sleeping on my couch for a month.  Yes, this is happy news.  I love my family very very much, but I quite often feel very far removed from all of them and miss them even more.  My parents live in Rochester, NY, Nathan in Buffalo, NY, my sister Larissa in Sweden, and my other brother Ian in NYC (although he's more of a transient these days and I'm not quite sure he's bound to any city).

Nathan is in town to do a rotation for med school at one of the local hospitals, so I know I won't see him all that often.  His first day was today, and he left at 6am this morning.  It is now 7:20 pm and I just got a call saying he's on his way home.  Nonetheless, we had a fun weekend together, and even if I don't get to see him all that much in the next few weeks, it's nice just knowing he's here.  Knowing that I have my brother in the same city as me is just incredibly reassuring and puts a huge smile on my face.

And Lucy is as happy as a clam having someone else around to jump on, lick, pester, and play with.

Cool dude bonding time.

She is even willing to share her coveted spot on the couch.

Because it means one more person to snuggle with!

It'll be a fun month for all of us!

And now, I haven't made a fun list in a while, so I thought a list describing my progress with the snooze button would be an excellent topic.

Things I've learned since going cold turkey with the snooze button

1)  Kicking an old habit isn't easy.  The snooze button has been my favorite morning friend for much of my adult life, and it hasn't been easy to give him up.  There has been many a morning where the 5 am alarm has gone off and all my body wants to do is press that button.  But my brain kicks in pretty quick, and I have yet to have one failure of a morning.

2)  A realization: In 9 minutes, it will be just as hard to get up.  No matter how many times I used to press the snooze button, it was never easy to get out of bed.  Waiting 9 minutes never made that eventual kick-the-feet-out-of-bed movement one ounce less painful.  And 9 minutes is not quality sleep.  It did me no good.  Therefore, I may as well just get out of bed.  Right now.

3)  I'm afraid of the dark.  In the wintertime, I get used to walking and running with Lucy in the dark after work.  But it's OK, because there are lots of other people out and about too.  It may be dark, but it's still only 5 or 6 pm--nowhere close to bewitching hour.  But at 5 am, it is eerily quiet.  The darkness is stale and cold, and it seems to be waiting for something exciting to happen.  Lucy and I jump at every sound, every movement.  We stick to the lighted main roads and don't venture back into the neighborhoods I love so dearly in the daylight.

4)  There are morning regulars.  The coffee shop baristas who are up and opening things as I walk by.  The sprightly old man in his green vest and coke bottle glasses that brightly says hello as we pass each other on our morning walks (one moment of brightness in the dark, eerie morningtime).  The 3 or 4 early morning runners, out getting their sweaty time in long before the sun rises.  The delivery men, unloading clanky trucks on early morning routes.  And other dog walkers.  We all smile and nod and continue on our way, bonded only by our early morning connection--a strange connection that doesn't exist with the multitudes of evening street regulars.

5)  Audiobooks are awesome.  After discovering the amazingness that is the Seattle Public Library, which allows me to "borrow" audiobooks for 3 weeks at a time and download them to my smartphone, all I crave is my morning half hour listen.  My brain doesn't like thinking in the morning, and this is the perfect way to wake it up and ease it into the day.  In the 3 weeks of school we've had so far, I've listened to close to 3 books.  With my typical lack of reading time, it can take me months to get through one book.  But with this audiobook discovery, I'm going to be able to make a huge dent in my "to read" list on Goodreads (favorite listen so far: Snowflower and the Secret Fan...how on earth they did that to their feet I will never understand).

6)  It's nice to have "time" in the morning.  I used to rush through my mornings, barely allowing myself enough time to sit down and eat a bowl of cereal.  Now I have my walk.  I sit and enjoy my breakfast while reading blogs or catching up on personal emails.  I take my time getting ready, putting make up on, choosing an outfit, and getting out the door.  I feel sufficiently awake and ready to take on the day, having already been awake for almost 2 hours by the time I leave the house.  And then I get in the car, drive 45 minutes, and my body falls back asleep again.  So sad.  Silly unfun commute...

7)  My "leaving-Lucy-at-home-alone-all-day" guilt is only partially assuaged.  I feel much better leaving the house in the morning knowing that her bladder and bowels are fully emptied.  I also am happy that she's gotten to walk around for 30 minutes before falling back asleep all day.  By the time I get home from work though, the "you've-been-stuck-in-the-apartment-all-day" guilt comes rushing back as always.  But it's nice to only need a short run or another half hour walk to tire her out again.  So some of that after work pressure has been relieved, which was essentially the goal of all of this.

8)  Perhaps, one day, I could become a morning exerciser.  Who knows...crazier things have happened.

I remember learning a long time ago from my orthodontist in middle school (another story for another day) that it takes 21 days to form a new habit.  I was going to come on here and celebrate making it one month and officially making my morning routine a "habit," but silly me had to go and do dorky "research" on the interwebz, and I stumbled upon this article that claims an average of 66 days is more accurate.  So really, I'm barely halfway there.

The rains haven't started in Seattle, and our warmer weather and sunshine is sticking around much longer than it typically does.  This has made my early mornings relatively easier.  But I dread the first pouring down rain morning and I wonder how strong my will power will be.  And I must come to accept that on those mornings, the hair will poof and I will be faced with more hair-in-pony-tail days than I'm used to.  I can accept that.  Less chance of catching the lice that sometimes makes it's way around the classroom.  Fun thought, I know...but a girl's got to find the positives somewhere. 

So to conclude the list, I can't say that the early morning riser goal has been achieved, but I consider myself to be well on my way.  Mission half-accomplished.