On coffee and getting up in the morning

I was woken up this morning at the ungodly hour of 8AM (I know, poor me.) by someone sanding down the door and door frame of our hotel room. They were getting ready to paint the doors. Doh. The hubby had already gone, and we had apparently decided to skip breakfast. I'll often say that I'll do this without remembering even waking up enough to be asked whether I wanted to (or this is what the hubby claims at least). So feel my terror, when I discovered that the coffee stash in the room only contained decaf, which is one of the four horsemen right alongside Photoshop. Many of you cannot probably even imagine the emotional roller coaster ride the decaf-discovery resulted in. I almost lost it for a moment and contemplated the potential downsides to dashing down to the hotel bar in my towel for a cuppa. On the plus side would have definitely been yet another Wikipedia worthy WTF-look from the wait staff. But no. I am, after all, a civilized grown up.

Could have fooled me.

I had to shower quickly, and not only because of the potential for scoring some coffee downstairs once I had clothes on and my hair didn't look like someone poured either drool or glue onto it (insert a dirty semen-related joke of your choice here) while I was snoring away, but also because the fumes from the doors already painted at the end of the hall were getting me just a little too high, just a little too early in the morning, and interfering with my need for coffee in a very weird way. Have you ever experienced a state where you aren't quite awake, and feel that you have been sipping on some gin or vodka when all you really wanted was some Zeuz-honest caffeine. Well, I guess we've all been close to that at 4AM on a Tuesday Sunday morning in some weird club that specializes in something called a Martini-Wartini, that you sneered at in the beginning of your night out, but at 4AM can no longer remember why, because you've downed six of them, and eaten the olives too. But enough about my blackouts fun nights in Copenhagen.

Finally, I got me some coffee, some bonus vanilla cookies, and some soda water too, and all was well with the world in the end. However, my coffee-emergency got me thinking about an ordeal I go through every single morning without a clear reason as to why - that thing called getting up and out of bed.

Damn you Lutheran work ethic! I thought I had done away with you so well, but this business of getting up in the morning (instead of the afternoon, 'cos eventually everyone needs to pee, and that's best done in the toilet), which is a sub-branch of the whole "by the sweat of your back must thou make thine own sustenance" (quoting from a very liberal - my own - translation of the bible, and am totally shooting from the hip, and too tired to search the online King James. Lightning bolts?) banished from paradise rule thing God threw at Adam (and Eve, his cow. Oh sorry, I didn't think she was human, because of the whole him having dominion over her. My feminist bad).

But, it's not so much God who has instilled any rules in me, it is a much more powerful force - my mother (also sometimes known by her Indian name: Looks sweet, but totally rolls with the big boys). She always was and continues to be the most powerful force (along with my father, who oftentimes finds it wise to agree with Ironfist though) in my life, and I love her dearly (because and despite of her). And even to this day, no matter of the amount of continents, oceans, and kilometers separating us, if I attempt to sleep later than 8AM I hear her call out my name, with the same volume she has always used in her brand of child rearing, as if I was still in my old bedroom, just off the hall, and I invariably get up. I have managed to resist her 'subtle' suggestions of me perhaps entering the workforce, but this getting up in the morning I just can't shake. But hey, if I was actually working I would probably find it a blessing.

Oh mom, I do love you, but stop shouting already. I. Am. Up.