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KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) Katharine O'Moore Klopf
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Tuesday, April 08, 2008

It's Spring, Damn It

I'm damn cranky. That's because it's spring, when a middle-aged mother's fancy lethargically turns to thoughts of sleep.

This is that damnable time of year that I long for the school year to be done with, damn it, so that I don't have to spend 15 damn minutes trying to awaken a tall, gangly, dead-to-the-world eighth-grade boy at six damn o'clock every damn weekday morning. Because I've always promised myself that I'd never let a minor child of mine go off to school in the morning without some parental hugs and cheer, I have to get up way too damn early 5 days a week. Why the damn schools think it's damn smart to have teenagers start classes at the crack of damn dawn, I'll never know. The zombie teen's first-grader brother doesn't have to be up until 7:30 a.m., damn it, and of course the little one is the easy one to awaken.

Summer and sleeping in on weekdays—ah, the perks of self-employment—can't come too damn soon. The school year here on Long Island runs until damn near the end of June.

Damn it!




4 comments:

Imperatrix said...

I'm sorry. Here, I'm a terrible mother, because Impera gets up half an hour before I do. In Iowa, the middle school day starts at 7:40, but I just can't get out of bed before 7 a.m. (The Consort is up around 5 a.m.). This year, we're all relishing the 8 a.m. start of school.

I suppose I shouldn't grumble about hearing her alarm go off (she places it on the other side of her room so she can't turn it off), seeing as some moms have to get up first, huh?

Katharine O'Moore-Klopf said...

Heh! My daughter, now 25, used to sleep through everything during her high school years! We'd even sneak into her room, once she was asleep, and set her clock down inside a big metal cooking pot so that the sound would reverberate when the alarm rang. Still didn't work for her. But it would wake us up from our bedroom down the hall!

Now it's her husband's and baby's job to wake her up each day. I hear that my granddaughter excels at the job. ;-)

Willard Hughes said...

A cupful of cold water to the face awakens the sleepiest of children. Unfortunately, there's nobody around (and awake) to pour the water on MY face at 0530, so that I can be on time for MY first class, which starts at 0644! I can sympathize.

Stephanie E. said...

Ahh, the power of "damn." ;) No other word like it when you're in a certain mood.

Spring and summer are the times one is least likely to get any sleep around here. Chance, unfortunately, wakes with first light--or earlier. This wasn't a problem in our last home, where she could climb up onto my bed and look out the window at the squirrels in the backyard until I was ready to get up. Now there's nothing for her to do or see when she gets up. So she proceeds to bark at me nonstop to let her out & feed her. Today--a Sunday--it was at 5 a.m.

Damn indeed.

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