This morning as I was cleaning up the kitchen, I was making all kinds of go-getting resolutions in my head as I often do, such as, “Never again will you consume four slices of pizza in one sitting. Don’t be late for work. Keep the apartment neat at all times…” Then as I pulled the coffee filter out of our snazzy new coffee maker, I swiftly dumped a heaping mass of grinds right smack into the open dishwasher. 

File that under ‘things I don’t have time for.’

As it turns out, coffee grinds, once let loose, will both multiply and scatter to surfaces nowhere near the original vicinity of the scourge as you attempt to contain them.

Can such an incident mess with one’s resolutions? Yes it can. Did it cause me to eat four slices of pizza? It could have were it not 8:03 a.m. Instead, the incident rendered the apartment further away from ‘neat’ status and made me late for work.

In other news, Steve finished the DC triathlon this weekend, and there was no dying, nor were there injuries. Today he is sore, bur wholly un-traumatized and proud of himself, as he should be. I’m proud of him, too.

Go Steve! Woooooooo! Gimme an S! Gimme a T! etc., etc. Goooooooo Steve! 

I observed on Sunday that when you are cheering someone on during a race, they will notice if you scream their name, but yelling 'woo!' and clapping are pretty much lost in the din. I did it anyway.

And it’s possible that I’ve been bitten by the bug, because I kind of want to attempt a triathlon myself. Hold me, I’m frightened.

Now for a dose of wedding snapshot goodness (of my dad walking me up the aisle) while we await the professional shots from our photographer:

I am not a morning person. Especially now that the sun doesn't rise until, like, noon or something (stupid sun), the only thing that gets me out of bed in the dark is the promise of a quick caffeine fix. If it weren’t for my love of coffee, or 'black gold' as Steve calls it, I would 100% freaking hate-abhor-despise* mornings.

My sophomore year of college, I wound up with a peculiar exam schedule. I had a bunch of papers due the first day of exam week, and then only one test on the last day. This basically meant that I had one whole week to do as I pleased. I mean, of course I was supposed to use that week to study, but who could possibly study for a single test for an entire week. Not me, anyway.

Knowing that this would probably be the only week of my adult life in which I would be beholden to no one with zero appointments, commitments or obligations – no one to see and no where to be, in other words – I decided to do whatever the heck moved me.

My schedule immediately flipped to my heading to the painting studio in the early evening. I stayed there until three in the morning, then I went back to my dorm room and surfed the infantile World Wide Web until I heard birds chirping. As the sky began its fade from black to dawn, I slipped under the covers and slumbered until three in the afternoon. Then I got something to eat and headed back to the painting studio in the early evening. Wash, rinse and repeat for seven glorious, fleeting and one-of-a-kind, never-to-be-relived, up-all-night, sleep-all-day days.

Years later, I am a functioning member of society and I’ve donned the shackles of a nine-to-five schedule (nine to six, in actuality), which obviously means I can no longer make my body magnificently happy by staying up all night and sleeping until three in the afternoon. For years, I muddled along in this morning haze, abusing the snooze and spending every last moment I could in bed before Father Time would force me to get up and running out the door.

Within the past year, I approached something approximating adulthood and realized the scattered, frantic, not-a-morning-person way of handling my mornings was no longer even close to fun or helpful. So I began getting up at 6 a.m. on most days (when force of will would allow) and working out, eating breakfast (breakfast? I had never heard of breakfast before the year 2007) and generally laying around for two hours in the morning instead of snoozing and fleeing.

Today I realized that I have got some insane work deadlines going on, and a ship-shape routine is required to prevent slipping into mental disarray and insanity and going by way of Britney with the partying and jail – oh wait, jail was Paris – but you know what I mean. The downward spiral. The bottom line is that I need a self-management routine in order to maintain solid control over my world so that I can function at the highest levels of efficiency and satisfaction.

As I began creating my morning and evening routines and calculating sleep needs and bedtime and all that, I did a little research on how to become a better morning person, and I stumbled across this article in the Seattle Times . Upon reading the sentence, “Before you decide to jigger with your internal clock, ask yourself if you really need to become a morning person,” I thought, “Oh my God. What am I trying to do to myself??”

And so I’ve suddenly moved a bunch of previously-known-as morning tasks to my nighttime routine, and you know what? Now I will get to sleep a whole hour later. Breakfast? I’ll eat a piece of cheese in the car. Working out? Nighttime. These excuses as to why I can’t work out at night no longer apply: “I’m hungry and I need dinner. I just ate dinner and I’m too full. I’m too tired from a long day.” Suck it up, Sunshine! You want to sleep in, then you damn well better hit the gym at some point in the evening.

I suddenly feel so free to realize that my days no longer consist of getting up, going to work, going home, eating dinner and going to bed. Because now I can stay up a little later and I’ll feel like I have a bit more evening time to enjoy now that I’m ditching this morning crap.

I’m going to say it loud and proud: Mornings suck! And that’s okay. Because now, my days come with more Nighttime Juicy Goodness™.

*Hate-abhor-despise means 'strongly dislike' or in the parlance of our times, 'really really really really really hate'.

I gave myself some time to enjoy the glow of the engagement, and I’m sure I’ll continue to glow indefinitely as far as I can tell. But after going for a full week with my head in the clouds, my writing schedule is really beginning to suffer. I know, I know, I’m allowed to give myself a break. But you know the feeling you get when you disregard something that you should be doing -- that little gnawing sensation, or maybe a feeling of dread or uneasiness -- and then you don’t really enjoy the time spent loafing anyway? Yeah, I’m starting to get that.

I realized this morning that my time is only going to become increasingly scarce as wedding planning gets under way. And then within the next few months, I’ll most likely start a new job, which is always incredibly demanding of both time and brain. So the time to write is absolutely now. I’m anxious that if I don’t fall back into my aggressive writing schedule, all these other factors that feel somewhat out of my control will take over and kill my dream of finishing the book entirely, or at least push it so far onto the backburner that it becomes just another thing on the list that feels neglected and therefore gives me heartburn.

One thing I’ve learned from this whole writing experiment is that I definitely fare best by coasting on the speed of my momentum. So from here on out, I will resume seizing my days. I’ve got the same number of hours in the day Leonardo da Vinci had, and I’m sure he could have planned a wedding, gotten a handle on a new job and written a book at the same time that he painted the Mona Lisa, invented the helicopter and gave himself anatomy lessons by dissecting a bunch of dead stuff. 

Day seizing shall now commence in full-speed-ahead mode.

PS: I bet if they had TV back then, Leonardo's biggest contribution to society would be some hot mess of a reality show. Or even more likely, he would have died penniless on his couch watching soaps. Note to self: no TV.

Today is my birthday. I have a job interview tomorrow, which really puts a damper on my celebration method. I will now examine my ideal birthday evening as opposed my stunted night-before-interview birthday evening.

Ideal Birthday Evening
1.    Dinner at fancy restaurant. I would eat many courses over several hours and go to bed as late as I want.
2.    I would eat a big ass dessert and not worry about carb bloat. Then I would come home after dinner and eat half a Carvel ice cream cake, because I could wear one of those comfy, maternity-looking, baby doll dresses to work the next day.
3.    I would drink. A lot. I would probably even get drunk. I wouldn’t worry about brain function or risk of hangover.

Now let’s examine the reality, shall we? Here will be my Stunted Night Before Big Scary Job Interview Birthday Celebration:
1.    A quick dinner in front of the TV and off to bed early so as to get that “good night’s sleep” -- which will probably consist of stress-induced insomnia because that’s standard pre-interview sleep for me.
2.    The food I actually eat for dinner is irrelevant, as long as the sodium and carb content isn’t offensive. Translation: hamburger, no bun. I need to feel at least somewhat comfortable in my interview pants tomorrow, and not at all like I’m on the verge of splitting the lining. No cake, but maybe I’ll stick a candle in a sugar-free fudgcicle for dessert or chew a piece of gum.
3.    No drinking. Must preserve what little remaining brain tissue I have left so that I can listen to the interviewer’s questions long enough to understand what she is asking and then formulate a response that matches the question.

No need to feel sorry for me, though. I fully plan to implement Ideal Birthday Evening Celebration either tomorrow or at some point this weekend.

What this all means for my word count is that it’s on hold today and tomorrow, since I need to research for this interview. Although, I still think I can write 3,700 words by Friday, so I might just stay on schedule. Maybe. I’ll make up for it this weekend otherwise.

Our plans to go away this coming weekend for my birthday have been foiled. It’s all very secretive, and Steve hasn’t told me where we’re going or why the trip has been postponed -- tentatively until the following weekend, but here’s my theory:

He is shopping for my engagement ring and the perfect specimen has yet to present itself.

Alternate Theory #1:
He couldn’t get a reservation for the supreme accommodations he wanted for this weekend.

Alternate Theory #2:
He couldn’t get reservations at the ultimate, most fabulous restaurant ever in the whole wide world that would be the setting for our engagement on the day or time that he wanted.

Alternate Theory #3:
He needs to wait for a small portion of the lurve (or love) to die down because it’s just too intense right now and he might suffer some serious head poppage if he tried to propose in this state of frenzied devotion.

Number three is my fave.

This means I’m ahead in my word count, but I’d better take advantage of the lead so that I’m not jumping through these same hoops next week when we’re leaving town.