| There is something very satisfying about waking up on a Saturday morning. Something about lying in bed, knowing you don't have to be anywhere for several hours, and listening to the rest of the world wake up that just makes the day START. As if the motion of opening your eyes after a good nights sleep ushers in the rest of the day.
It does, really. It makes the day start. . . makes things begin anew. It is much easier to move on with your day, you week, your life, if there is always a new one to look forward to (and not a never ending cycle of sleepless nights, caffeine binges, and waking nightmares.)
That is where I am. I woke up this morning, blinked at the light that was sneaking through the curtains next to my bed, and rolled over. Nowhere to be. Not late for anything. I closed my eyes again, welcomed the blanket of darkness, snuggled down in my sheets, and began to listen to those household sounds that I had long since forgotten to remember. Little murmers of life that had, somehow, ceased to exist as a part of my morning routine.
The floorboards above me creak in the way that I always dreaded on Sundays as a child. It meant that my parents were getting up. If they creaked before 8:30, it meant that we were going to go to church. I knew then, even as I know now, that it holds little meaning to them. It is just one more thing that they do, one more committee to be a part of. . . one more brick on their highway to heaven. Sometimes, if I was REALLY quiet on those mornings, I could get up, and get dressed before they did. On those mornings, I would slip up the stairs as silently as a 9 year old knows how, and leave a little scribbled note on the table.
"I walked to church this morning."
Often as not, if they knew that I had gone on my own, they would roll over and fall back to sleep. They would greet me when I got home with the sweet promise of pancakes and bacon, and ask me what I had learned at Sunday school, before moving on down my list of chores. . . omitting completely any conversation about what they had learned in their extra hour of sleep.
Often, mixed in with any number of creaks and groans and thumps, there are whispers of plans for the day. I can hear them up there, sometimes talking low, sometimes talking in a normal voice. .. occasionally a giggle from my mother. They talk, and then my father rolls out of bed, and goes to take a shower, and my mom rolls over onto her side with a book.
From another part of the house, I hear the annoying strains of my sisters alarm clock as it blares into her ear and brings her into some semblance of awareness. She always falls out of bed, occasioning a rather loud *thunk* on my ceiling. Sometimes she makes it out of her room in one piece, but usually she falls again before she gets to her door. . .slipping on scattered clothes, incomplete homework assignments, the bed. . . She stubs her toe, and I can hear her whimpering even in the basement. She limps across the hall, and crawls into bed with my mother, where I hear yet more whispers. . . mostly loud giggles as my mother puts down her book, and rains tickles and love all over Amanda's ribs.
I'm seperate from all that.
The dog's water is frozen again, and they can hear the movement of the house as well. They are jumping up and down on the deck in the backyard with anticipation coloring their yips a foggy white in the chill March morning. They chase each other up and down the stairs, and roll around on the snow laden lawn, ripping first at each other, and then at a discarded piece of carpet, or maybe a broken tree branch.
Just down the hall, my cat is scratching at the greenhouse door. It is morning, and she is wanting to get to her scratch post to do her morning stretches. She paces the brick floor, stopping to smack idly at a leaf or flower that is in her way.
For myself, my eyes are open now, and I am staring blankly at the ceiling as the morning wanders lazily towards afternoon. I have to work at 4, which means I have to be out of the house by at least 3:30. I should probably get up, but I am enjoying the sensation of doing NOTHING, so I procrastinate until I can hear my family wandering around the rest of the house.
:) I guess it is my turn. I flop the covers off to one side, (the wrong one) and get tangled in them as I try to get to the door. I fall, laughing at myself as I do so, and remove my feet from the mess that was my bed. I flip on the lights, throw in some Mozart, and begin my day. | 
