I’m not a morning person, as two ex-wives, Kevin, my family and now CL will readily attest.  In fact, I hate mornings, being forced out of slumber and a warm bed, with an unbridled fury that I normally reserve for Ann Coulter and Mariah Carey albums. I don’t wake easily, nor happily.

I used to attribute this to my lifestyle-induced lack of sleep; for years now, I’ve subsisted on two to four hours of sleep a night, catching up on Sundays as best as I could.  Turns out that’s not true, though; ever since CL and I started dating, I’ve entered the world of Adult Human, and I get about eight hours or so a night.  As I always predicted though, the deleterious side effect of adjusting to a healthy amount of sleep is that on those mornings following nights that I have to stay awake late (to work at the bar or play with the Exhibit(s)), I’m absolutely miserably exhausted.

We played an extra night this week, helping Carlos fill his slot on the calendar last night, and so for two nights in a row I’ve not gotten to bed until three AM-ish, which meant that this morning I might as well have been dead.  If it weren’t for CL, I probably would have slept until noon or beyond; I didn’t hear either of my alarms at all.  Fortunately, today is her birthday, which (counter to the schedule and stress of the past week) made this morning a really good waking.

Not having kids, and not planning to, I never would have imagined that I would feel like my parents in certain ways.  Mostly, I think of things like the eye-rolling dread that comes with a 2 AM phone call from the local precinct asking for bail money, or the anger at yet another window or screen broken with a soccer ball.  But as I lay there this morning, smoking a cigarette and trying desparately to keep my eyes open, watching Cynthia open her presents, I had that weird feeling of looking at the world through someone else’s eyes, and it hit me that I was living my parents’ lives on every Christmas when I was a kid.

It’s impossible to wake up with anything other than a warm heart and a glowing outlook on life when a beautiful woman is sitting next to you with the eyes and smile of a child.  I understand now how my parents were able to get so little sleep and still not kill us with our own gifts every year.

Happy birthday, CL.  And thanks for letting me celebrate it with you.