I woke up this morning.

And I was...wait for it...awake.

(Yet another in a sea of endless examples of the stellar writing you come here for, right people?)

This is a feeling I have experienced maybe five times in my life, and the previous four all happened before I was of legal drinking age.

Normally when I wake up it goes something like this:

Oooh, there's a fire! Can't you hear the fire alarm? Fuck that's annoying! But I don't smell smoke. And there's no hot firemen. What's the point of a fire alarm if no hot firemen come running? If there's no hot firemen, then I'll just STAY HERE AND BURN, thankyouverymuch.

Open a single eye.

Oh. The fire alarm is in fact my cell phone alarm going off. It has worked its way into my subconscious and integrated itself into my dreams again. Charming.

Get out of bed.

Fucking hardwood floors.

Fucking cold air.

Contemplate that perhaps I should think about wearing pajamas, for once. Decide no, that will never happen, and wrap myself up in a blanket instead.

Turn off cell phone alarm. (It's by design that I have to get out of bed to turn it off. Experience has taught me that if I don't place the alarm out of reach, then in all likelihood I will extend a single arm out from under a mound of covers, grab whatever small thing on the nightstand that is making noise, and hurl it at the wall, rendering it silent. All while remaining asleep! So yes, I place the alarm across the room.)

Check the time. Hm, 13 minutes before I have to be in the car and on the road. You know what that means. 3 minutes of sleeping in!

Burrow back under the covers.

Repeat painful wake up-fuck-it's-cold-I-hate-life routine.

Shower, get dressed, brush hair, put on makeup, grab breakfast. All of this in about 7 minutes. I'm normally the world's slowest person when it comes to getting ready, but I love sleeping in so much that I endeavor to do it until the last possible second, thereby leaving me an absolutely tiny window in which to get ready. It's worth it to me for those precious extra seconds of sleep.

Get in the car, turn up Jawbreaker, Guns n Roses, or any other music that will prevent me from falling asleep on PCH and careening into the Pacific.

But this morning, THIS MORNING, it went like this:

Wake up.

What's that I hear? Nothing but a cat purring next to my head? No brain-numbing, soul-killing, shrill tones?

Are you fucking kidding me? Did I just wake up on my own?

Holy shit. So THIS is what being well rested feels like!

I got ready at a leisurely pace, gave the pit bull some kisses before I left the house, rocked out to Eddie and the Hot Rods in the car, and was running early enough to stop at 7-11 for pure, sweet, lifeblood. (No, not whiskey [I wish]. Second best - coffee!) And now I'm about to do a storytime, which entails jumping around acting like a four-year-old and is awesome because that's pretty close to my level of emotional maturity. And thanks to the coffee (24 ounces! God bless America!), the jumping around isn't exactly voluntary, anyways.

I never thought I'd say it, either, but it's only 10am and today is already fucking awesome.

Not necessarily awesome enough to make this a habit, however. I'm well rested because last night I did the unthinkable and fell asleep around 10pm. This was because the night before, Sunday, went something like this:

10pm: I can't be out too late tonight, guys. I have work tomorrow. Let's just grab a beer and call it a night.

Midnight: Shots!

1:30am: Beer run!

3am: I should be leaving now, guys.

4am: Wow, that was a hilarious story. Let's stay up and keep talking forever and ever because sleep is for fools. Fools!

6am: Uh, I should probably head home now.

It was a long night. Still, I managed to grab a couple hours of sleep before work, and combined with the nap I'd had earlier that day, I wasn't too horribly tired. Proving, once again, that I can totally pull off this kind of behavior, which is why staying out way too late is more likely to repeat itself than going to bed early and waking up well rested.

But it was really nice while it lasted.