Waking up on opposite sides of the bed

By: LOUISE ESOLA - Staff Writer | Friday, April 7, 2006 10:28 PM PDT ∞

Similar to the significant difference between Republicans and Democrats, there are morning people, who wake up whistling, and then there are people like me, who would like to take an Uzi to the alarm clock.

Each annoys the living daylights out of the other. Literally, in this case.

Last week, the fabulously anonymous Donkey Kong and I celebrated our first year of marriage at a lovely bed and breakfast in a locale so remote and peaceful there was ---- are you sitting down? ---- no cell phone reception or real Diet Coke.

We had long-anticipated having little to do but read and, the most exciting for me, not having to get up early in the morning.

(I'll spare you the elaborate suggestions from my mother ---- who wants more grandchildren the way a cat wants a mouse ---- for what we should do to celebrate our anniversary.)

As for reading books, Donkey Kong and I have our opposite stakes in the soil.

I like great literary masterpieces; Donkey Kong prefers business-type books and often interrupts me while I am reading Hemingway or Orwell to regale me with spellbinding financial pointers, such as:

"Did you know that if you bury $100 in a jar in the back yard tomorrow, in 2056 you'd still have $100? But if you instead put 22 percent of that $100 in a 3CPO account and the rest in an R2D2, you'd have $17,980,056.87 in 'Star Wars' collectors' item coins. Enough to buy a Hovercraft and the expensive diapers for retirement."

I figure we make a great pair. I'm good at explaining "1984"; he's good at explaining the actual stock market crash that happened three years later.

This scholarly clash I can handle.

What's really troublesome is our concept of what time the sun actually rises.

All the merry way to this lovely bed and breakfast, we were bursting with excitement at the promise of waking up whenever we "darn well felt like it," my words exactly.

This practice is often referred to as "sleeping in." No work. No household chores. No upstairs neighbor with a penchant for Bob Marley and break-dancing before breakfast. Ahhh, wonderful sleep.

Evidently, to Donkey Kong --- who typically leaves for the office under a still-moonlit sky ---- "sleeping in" means rolling out of bed a very-daring several minutes after the rooster crows. For me, "sleeping in" translates into waking up after the rooster has been bludgeoned, de-feathered, and marinated for dinner.

Of course I was forced to wake up earlier than I had planned, leaving me jetlagged from my trip to Fantasyland, where I had blissfully believed that I would actually get to sleep until 4 p.m. "Nobody needs that much sleep," Donkey Kong argued.

This, you can imagine, is not the first time we have collided on the appropriate hour to wake up. In fact, it's becoming a weekend family tradition.

I read somewhere that sleep is important because it lets you "fill up your gas tank" for the upcoming day. If sleep is the road to rejuvenation and replenishment, and the more you need the bigger your gas tank, it would be correct to say that I am driving an H3 Hummer and Donkey Kong a Vespa motorscooter.

On most weekend mornings I'm in a deep sleep, swimming in a sea of blankets like a fish in water. Meanwhile, Donkey Kong is chirping away like an early bird, with the television on, the coffee brewed, the newspaper fetched and unfolded, with the sun blazing through the open window blinds.

It's true what they say, you know.

A bird and a fish can fall in love, but what time will they wake up in the morning?

Contact staff writer Louise Esola at lesola@nctimes.com.

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