Heh, it’s just not Sunday without reading the funnies! This one begged to be blogged. “You’re one of those lactose intolerants!” I loves me some whacked-out Bucky Katt.
Early rising is usually not in the cards Chez Gique on the weekends, but there’s something about spring mornings that makes it a little easier to bestir oneself. Of course, we have 3 functioning alarm clocks (one feline), so our pre- and post-dawn routine follows a comfortable pattern. This morning, most unusually, I got up a couple of hours before absolutely necessary and fetched the laptop for a little Sunday morning blogging in bed. The wireless connection on the second floor is “very good.”
Sometime after 4:30 or 5:00 a.m., Riley starts to investigate the possibility of rousing one of us for breakfast. This is ignored for as long as possible. Some mornings, he makes life hijjus with his prancing around across our pillows and repetitive “rahr! rahr! Rahr!” sounds, so he gets himself kicked out into the hallway and the door shut behind him. Tough love is no fun.
5:45 a.m. The first alarm goes off. It’s a horrible shrill tone. This is the signal for entrenched snoozing. It gets slapped off very quickly, and we doze pleasantly. The second alarm, which turns on the radio to WBEZ, goes off at 6:15 a.m. On Sunday mornings, there’s a program on called Magnificent Obsession, followed by Speaking of Faith. David doesn’t like either of these programs so the radio generally gets slapped off until the second alarm. Sometimes, though, he gets up really early to work on his various computer enterprises (not only does he host and moderate several discussion lists for computer professionals in his field, he maintains a huge archive and resource site and also a web site for his dad’s company. On those mornings, I snuggle down and listen sleepily to both programs, which I find comforting and even a little inspiring.
By mutual agreement, sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m., we try to distract Riley by petting him and cuddling, because neither of us wants to go downstairs to feed him just yet. It becomes a waiting game. Most mornings, David gets up and feeds him. This morning, I got up just after 7 (which I consider the ideal time to give in to Riley’s demands) and was escorted downstairs by our furry mobile alarm. For some reason, his escort duties involve insinuating himself directly in front of my stumbling steps and stopping dead. He does not seem to recognize that causing me to trip over him and break my neck falling down the stairs is counter-productive to his goals of getting his morning half-can of cat fud. I got Riley fixed up a little after 7 and grabbed the moveable ‘puter. David puttered around grinding coffee beans – we got a big bag of Caribou Coffee Rainforest blend yesterday at Costco and we’re giving it a test run.
7:00 a.m. BBC World Service comes on. For some reason, we love listening to this show. Today’s show is about Iraq’s reaction to Egypt’s President Mubarak telling them they’ve been in an undeclared civil war, Ethiopia’s drought crisis and request for aid, and the Italian elections, along with some fund “uomo nelle strada” interviews with either voters or football fans. The other big story seems to be the Sunday ferry flap in the Scottish islands of Lewis and Harris. It seems that a protest of the first Sunday arrival of the ferry fell through because everybody was in church.
7:38 a.m. Just now David brought up the coffee in the mugs some friends gave us 5 years ago when we bought this house. He’s put hazelnut creamer in it; this is one of those cozy little intimacies that goes right back to our first “dates” together. Getting towards the end of the Beeb’s broadcast, the Sports World segment comes on, full of incomprehensible terms and teams and lots of scores that sound like “West Ham: nil” and so on. And of course, the cricketing news is delightfully opaque.
8:00 a.m. Weekend Edition Sunday starts. We usually putter around in bed drinking coffee and petting the now-sated cat, who follows one or the other of us upstairs.
8:10 a.m. A really obnoxious alarm set to another NPR station goes off and is immediately slapped off. This is a fail-safe alarm that is meant to awaken me from a doze on weekdays, as I don’t have to be at work until 9, and David leaves early enough that I often fall sound asleep again. I’m trying to improve my on-time performance, so I try to get up soon after this alarm goes off. Weekend mornings, though, I disregard it.
9:00 a.m. I start thinking about getting something pulled together to get to church by 9:30 a.m. – choir practice time before the service.
9:25-9:35 a.m. I actually leave the house. “It’s only a couple of minutes’ away,” is the rationalization. This morning, I really have to make an effort to be there on time, because we have a boatload of music to rehearse again. Today is Palm Sunday, so we’ll be doing the dramatic reading of the Passion Gospel. I haven’t been specifically asked to be a reader, but I may get tapped to do one of the speaking parts. It happens – I can project clearly and they know I don’t have a problem with doing it. If not, I’ll be one of the chorus shouting “crucify him!”
After I toddle off to church, David will generally putter around here showering and reading news. After church, as it’s a beautiful day and there are actually early daffodills coming on, we may drive down to the Morton Arboretum and go for a long walk in the woodland glades.
