I’d forgotten all about sleeping in

I don’t sleep late anymore. It just doesn’t happen. If my alarm doesn’t go off, and my wife doesn’t wake me when she gets up, my kid will.

It’s a good system, and I usually don’t need it anyway. I like my early mornings, and I only tend to grab a little extra sleep when I really need it. So I don’t even remember the last time I slept late.

But sometimes, every safeguard fails at once. Sometimes your sick kid keeps you up all night. Sometimes you loan your vibrating alarm to a friend, and you don’t set a ringtone alarm on your phone because you don’t want to wake your wife, who’s also sick. Sometimes your wife goes back to sleep when her alarm goes off, because she’s not going to work that day. And sometimes your kid sleeps in, because again, she was up all night.

If any one of those things hasn’t happened this morning, my wife wouldn’t have had to elbow me at ten to eight and tell me I’d better get up. I’d have had time to do more than shower and clean the kitchen like I’d promised. I’ll still be on time for work, but I feel like I’m starting my day in the middle, and I feel totally unprepared for it.

That’s nobody’s fault but mine, of course. If nothing else, it’s good to have a reminder once in a while that there’s room to grow and get better at the whole “parenting” thing. I just don’t think it’s going to happen today.

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