Who Would Believe It?

Dearest Rachel –

We’ve had to get out of the house at ridiculously early hours in the past – flights don’t really concern themselves with the schedules of their individual passengers, for instance – so you know I’m capable of getting up early. And, of course, there are the many work days when I’ve been out of the house before you’ve been particularly conscious – although I always made sure to kiss you farewell on my way out. But after yesterday’s letter explaining how I’d go about preparing to head downstate tomorrow, you might be the only person willing to believe that I’d had a successful trial run this morning.

Not that I set out last night to test myself and any ability I might have to wake up on time to accomplish this; it just sort of… happened. After getting home from a thoroughly sumptuous meal at the folks’ place (pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon; absolutely not kosher, but who cares? And I know I shouldn’t get too used to this Thursday night routine that we have together, as it can’t last forever, but we have to enjoy these moments while we can), Daniel went to join Logan in the family room, while I headed to the bedroom to hang out, as is our custom. Not wanting to watch the Cubs be kicked out of the playoffs – although, as it turned out, they’re the last team left holding on by their fingertips at this point, as all the other brackets have been resolved, so I probably would have enjoyed the game after all – and not seeing all that much else to spend my time on, I decided to wrap up the evening early, at a little after nine. I stuck my head into the family room to let the boys know and to bid them good night, and shut everything down in my area, including myself.

With that background in mind, the results shouldn’t have been all that surprising. The next thing I was aware of, I was coming to in the same pitch black dark that I’d let myself drop off in. It was early, too early to really get started on anything… but even as I considered just rolling over and going back to sleep, I had to know: how early was it?

I reached for my phone and squinted at it; it was just a few minutes before four. Twenty-four hours from now, I could be rolling out of bed and into the shower, so as to clean up and get out in time to pick the girls up and head downstate… and without even bothering to set an alarm! I won’t say I was proud of myself – that hour of the morning is far too early to experience emotions such as that, and even if I could, I’d know not to get smug about it; I couldn’t rely on this happening twice in a row, so I’d still have to set the alarm tonight – but I was pleased with the results, nonetheless.

At the same time, I wasn’t sure what I should do about my present situation. After all, if I wanted to, I could toss on my T-shirt and workout shorts, and I could be at the gym shortly after it opened. However, my left ankle was still bothering me from the past couple of days’ worth of exertion. I don’t know if it was all those miles in those hiking boots on Wednesday, or ignoring the growing pain during yesterday’s workout, but as it turned out, I could only do a mile uphill this morning before it got unbearable. Actually, it was already unbearable before that; even as I stepped on the treadmill, I could feel it asking me if I was sure I wanted to do this. And once I got started, it really started to complain; I could only grind that mile out after telling myself I needed to reach that point in order to have a reasonable stopping spot

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That happened hours later.

As of four in the morning, however, I took the opportunity to use the washroom (as you do when you wake up from some six, seven hours of sleep), peruse my news feed, and see if I was going to wake up any further – to say nothing of giving my ankle a little more rest in hopes it would be up to my usual workout when I finally did get around to it (not that it did any good, as it turned out). After maybe a little less than an hour of this, I shut off my phone… and it was still pitch black in the room. I decided that, given just how early I’d managed to get up, I could allow myself another hour or so of rest…

…which, much to my chagrin, turned into two and a half. Now granted, I don’t have anywhere to be today at a given time. And thanks to my ankle, I was home and dressed and out the door to the office at much the same time as I have been throughout the week. But no one was awake to see that I actually managed to get up and walk around at the appointed hour I’ll need to tomorrow. In others’ eyes, I’ve been much the same slugabed today as I usually have; would anyone believe me telling this without proof?

Then again, even with proof, it’s meaningless; it only needs to happen on the days it needs to happen, and this wasn’t one of them. At least I have a rough idea of what I need to do in order to make it happen; all I need to do is repeat the process (while still setting an alarm, as I don’t trust lightning to strike twice in a row), and we should be all right. Oh, and I should probably warn the boys to do much the same, at least with regard to a proper bed time.

In either case, I’ll appreciate it if you were to keep an eye on us all, honey, and wish us luck. We’re going to need it.