Rise and shine

I woke up at 6 today, put on my exercise clothes, and drove to the gym for an early-morning workout.

I get it in my head every year that I should work out in the mornings, and then I try it, and then I go another year before I try it again, because it always reaffirms two things for me:

1. Exercise is stupid.
2. I am not a morning person.

I do not enjoy, nor have I ever enjoyed, mornings. I don’t like to talk in the mornings. I don’t like to interact socially in the mornings. I don’t like to think in the mornings. I gotta have three cups of coffee in me before I’ll even grunt at anybody.

I got this from my mother. She was also not a morning person. When I was going to school and she was working, we had a simple routine. She would come to my room and say, “Get up.” I would drag myself up in a few minutes, stumble into the kitchen, and we would have a wordless breakfast. We didn’t even look at each other. It was the way things should be.

My father had a very endearing way of waking me in the morning. First, he would come in my room and turn on the light and start shouting, “Come on, wake up!” If I didn’t immediately respond, he would come and snatch all the covers off of me, then pull the pillow from under my head.

If this didn’t work, he would grab me, shake me, roll me over and tickle me until I screamed bloody murder and I had no choice but to get up, usually swinging my fists at him blindly. Then he’d laugh and walk out of the room. He found of all of this funny. Looking back on it, I sort of understand the Menendez brothers a little more.

This morning wasn’t bad because I was bolstered by a rare good night of sleep on our new mattress, which is a very exciting new addition to my life. (When you reach your 40s, you take excitement where you can get it). We realized the other day that we had gotten the old mattress when our daughter was a baby, and since she’s now 17, it might be a good time to get another one. That, and its shape resembled the surface of the moon.

I didn’t realize how much thicker the new mattress was until the delivery man put it on the bed. It hits me about chest high. I feel like the girl from “The Princess and the Pea” up on that thing. My poor wife is going to need a mini-trampoline to get up on it.

I hope she doesn’t roll out of the bed during the night. She did that once early in the marriage, and she’s never forgotten my reaction. She got back in the bed, woke me up to tell me that she had fallen off the bed, and I looked at her and said, with a little irritation, “Well, you’re back in it now.” She was about six months pregnant at the time. I lost my chance at “Husband of the Year” at that moment.

So now I’m looking forward to another restful night on my mile-high mattress. Then I’ll wake up in the morning, sans backache, drink my coffee in silence, and wonder what the hell I was thinking about the previous day when I went to the gym before sunrise.