adulthood can be fun

There's this parking company that has garages downtown called Parking Can Be Fun. I find that parking is never fun, unless it's free, and even then I mostly wish I could've just teleported to wherever I was going, anyway.

In that way I find that Parking Can Be Fun and the title of this post, Adulthood Can Be Fun, fall into the same category. That category is called sarcasm.

Sunday morning after a late night out watching the Redbirds baseball game and drinking beer, I slept until 10 a.m. I don't know that I could, at gunpoint, recall for you the last time I slept so late. I hadn't gone to bed until close to 3 a.m., so it made sense that I'd slept in and frankly I didn't have anything going on that morning that required me to be upright before noon.

So it should've been no big deal at all, right? But based on the absolute funk I was in that morning you would've thought the junkyard cat from next door had gotten into my house in the night and pooped on my bedroom floor. I've realized that I actually dislike sleeping in.

It's not just a preference for waking up early, if I had my druthers. It is a literal and passionate DISLIKE for sleeping past about 8 a.m. It screws my whole day all up, and even though the homeless lady who drinks from my outdoor spigot is pretty good about putting my newspaper on my front porch to keep it from getting stolen, even she can't always save it and if I'm not up before 8 I can kiss it goodbye.

So yesterday morning, faced with a potentially incurable funk from my 10 a.m. wake-up time, I immediately went into action, washing dishes, cleaning my bedroom and, of course, balancing my checkbook. Finally, around 11 a.m., when I was headed out to get an iced coffee for to enjoy with my paper, I felt vaguely normal again. And it was at that moment that I fully recognized and accepted my official Early Riser status.

The night before when we'd been out at The Flying Saucer following the ball game, in the midst of a conversation about relationships a group of us ended up discussing things in terms of the housing market in an extended metaphor of foreclosures and toxic assets. We laughed and I commented that we must be adults if we're comparing dating to depreciating home values.

And while I don't think I ever would've done that five years ago, or probably even one year ago, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that 365 days ago I would've complained to no one about sleeping past 8 a.m. I would've happily snoozed until 11 if left unattended. There've been plenty of habits I've developed, preferences that have emerged in my life of late that I've jokingly referred to as my prerequisites to membership in the AARP. But this one? This one might really be it.

If you're looking for me at 7 a.m., I'll be working the crossword puzzle, drinking my coffee and contemplating how many years I have til I'm walking the mall in comfort shoes and a pink windbreaker.


cheers,
elizabeth