I love mornings

I never thought I would be ‘that woman’. The one who is up at six in the morning on her own power, but that is who I have become. Some of it, no doubt, is a function of having our bedroom with an eastern exposure. The sun breaks over Mount Hood, the Willamette valley is flooded with the first, eight minute old rays of light, dawn seeps into our window and the light strikes my eyes. Then a cat will stir and I am awake. Many a work day morning that has saved my ass! In no possible way am I complaining, at least not on those mornings. Over time, as this tendency to wake early has become more pronounced, I have come to enjoy it.

This Saturday morning, I was up at 5:30. I thought, briefly, about going back to sleep but got out of bed to check on the back-up I’ve been running (the travails of setting up a new network) and that was all she wrote. The next thing I was hunched over my Mac, waiting for the last six gigabytes to go across the wire so I could unplug the wire and take it to the desk. I started streaming Weekend Edition, listening to host Bob Simons’ sonorous voice and two hours have passed. I started playing around with some photos in PE* and suddenly it was a quarter of eight.

(I’ve just heard Simon say that comments by Obama where he says it plain, when he says that the GOP will say, “did I mention he was black.’ Anyone who thinks that it *won’t* happen is living in some kind of fantasy world. McCain, of course, will have to try and stay above it but for him to be excoriated for saying what is manifestly obvious to anyone is just ludicrous and another example of how the media tries to turn the narrative to generate interest. He has opted out of public financing, Obama knows what is coming at him because the GOP *will* try to make Americans fear Barack Obama. He’s going to have to be brilliant because large parts of it are going to come out sideways. But to suggest, for example, that FOX news does not function as anything so much as a PR branch of the RNC is to engage in a willful blindness to the reality of modern American politics. )

At any rate, these quiet bits of the morning have become the very best part of my day. The world is largely quiet, those sounds that intrude are distant, street sounds that remind me that I live in a city. The only sounds are of Liam being Mighty Panther Ninja Cat and Willow sneaking up on me to escape the MPNC and NPR. Those moments where I can only write if I have only my own words in my head are what I love mornings for. At 8:40 on a Saturday, having been up for three hours, the day feels full of potential.