Five a.m.

I've worked on and off as a bartender/server for the majority of my adult life.  As such, I have always been a night owl.  If I ever saw 5 a.m., it was because I had stayed up that late.  Also, if I saw 5 a.m. it meant that I had been knocking back a couple after work. 

Things appear to be changing.

I've recently found myself exhausted by the time 9 pm comes around.  After snuggling with Tracy and Shea in an effort to get Shea to bed, I've been unable to keep my eyes open.  This means that there have been days where I didn't complete my lesson plans the night before.  Unable to avoid sleep, I've set my alarm for 5 am.   I woke early, got my coffee, made my way into my office, shut the door, and gone to work.  It's been a revolution in terms of what have traditionally been my productive hours.  I've now done this on more than one occassion.

This morning I woke at 5 am naturally.  It was probably the dream I had which involved getting into a fistfight in a gelato shop while a crab attacked my leg (I know I don't get it either), but my eyes opened and I found myself drawn to the computer.  I rose out of bed, crossed at the foot of the bed and peered at the alarm clock on Tracy's nightstand.  5:00 am.  5:00 exactly. 

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, gave myself a quiet "hmm," and made my way downstairs to turn on the coffee pot.  The next hour was spent writing five new pages of my novel.  I didn't quite get to the fistfight, but I got through the dynamics that would conceivably lead to the fistfight.  I caught up on my email after that and still had time to crawl back into bed with Tracy for a couple minutes before she got up to get ready for work. 

We snuggled with the dog and talked quietly through the early hours of the morning.  I shut my eyes and fell asleep for a little bit, only to wake to Shea at the edge of the bed, but I knew that little nap was justified as I had already utilized the early morning hours for carving out some time for me, for my writing, for Katie and John (novel characters) and their blooming romance. 

I might be a convert from the night to day.  There is something exquisitely peaceful about those silent moments of the morning where the only sound is my fingers across the keyboard.  I love knowing my family is asleep around me, close, dreaming, at ease, and that I can go to them at any moment in the quiet moments that inevitably fall over me after I've gotten a few pages down.