Serenity now!

Readers of this blog may or may not be familiar with the hit sitcom Seinfeld and/or the episode where Frank Costanza and Kramer hold in anger and frustration temporarily by reciting the mantra "Serenity now" (the same episode where Jerry discovers he "cares").

Anyway, despite the failure of "Serenity now" in the TV show, I've adopted it as my own mantra in the mornings. For you see, I think I'm a pretty happy person and have a decent sense of humor--yea, a charming wit and a twinkle in my eye--at almost every time of day except between 6 and 8 a.m. This, I believe, has been the hardest thing for Matt to accept about me, and definitely the hardest thing for me to change about myself. Before Matt and I got married, we didn't really ever see each other early in the morning, so we had a pretty good time whenever we were together. We still have a pretty good time almost always, except sometimes during those witching hours. I'm just not the kind of person who wakes up happy. Well, I do if I wake up after 8. But between 6 and 8, I wake up evil. (I should add that if I wake up before 6, I'm usually too punchy and giggly from the lack of proper REM cycles to think about how much I hate waking up early.)

Here's a sample of Evil Eliza's occasional extra-bad weekday morning: alarm goes off at 6:20. It continues to go off every ten minutes (snooze button), and I continue to half-hear Matt's admonitions to "get up!" until I finally do get up at 7. (This is when I technically should be leaving for work.) I stumble out of bed, often breaking a nail, stubbing a toe, or otherwise hurting myself. After showering, I wade through the pile of clothes in my closet (the only downside of having a decent-sized closet is, I figure I might as well utilize the space and don't really hang anything up, I just sort of drape it somewhere), try on and discard at least 2 outfits because of course I didn't think the night before about what I was going to wear. My hair is a mess, there's an elusive hair or crack or grain of sand in my contact lens, and I can't find my mascara/slip/purse/watch/coat/pack of gum.

Matt still hasn't come up from the basement, where he hides out, amazed at the drama, during my morning tempest. I stand at the top of the stairs and scream (so that he can hear me 2 floors down, of course), "MAAAAAAAAAATT!" He eventually comes up, I complain and slam doors and wonder to myself (well, in a mumble loud enough for him to hear) why he didn't have the decency to make me lunch when he knew I was late and didn't have cash in my wallet. He points out that he has made me lunch and it's sitting on the counter. I should mention to you that not only do I never have cash in my wallet, Matt almost always makes me lunch of his own volition, and I find it an amazing quality, since otherwise I would be eating my desk stash of microwave popcorn and Snickers. When I'm not having an early-morning tantrum, I'm very grateful for his thoughtfulness and patience. We finally leave and sit in traffic. I grumble and steam and flip the radio channels aimlessly. Matt is calm but rolls his eyes. Before I drop him off at school, I wake up from my stupor and beg his forgiveness, then after obtaining it, brightly remind him that creative personalities (like mine, of course) are often prone to dramatic outbursts of emotion.

I know what you're thinking. "BRAT!" And it's true! My tendency to be bratty in the morning--and to be extremely late to everything--is something I STILL haven't gotten over since toddlerhood, although I am lucid enough the other 22 hours of the day to realize that this is a problem. So Matt and I decided, independently, after over a year of marriage, that there needed to be a change in this morning "routine." He told me yesterday that he wasn't going to try to wake me up anymore (it never works anyway and just gets him frustrated), and I told him about my "Serenity now" plan.

So far it's working okay. I hit the snooze until 7:20 this morning, and I was 45 minutes late to work, but I was as smiley as Matt's ever seen me. I just hope I don't have a breakdown someday, which, as we know from Seinfeld, can result from holding in one's feelings for too long ("serenity now, insanity later"). It's pretty obvious, though, that in this case, I've never really been wronged or justifiably angry in the mornings. So this can only be a good thing. One more step towards adulthood.

Serenity now!