Early Bird Special

I work. Five days a week. In a stressful (due to personalities) environment.

On the weekends I want to relax. I want to sleep in. And as tacky as it sounds, I don't want to be bothered, at least before noon. The exception to this is, if I have plans. If I have plans with someone on Saturday morning, it's OKAY if they call me early to see what's up. If I'm considering plans and that person wants to check my availability, it's okay if THEY call me early to see what's going on.

Aside from that, I don't want people calling me before noon. Just because you can't sleep doesn't mean I can't.

I'm pretty vocal about this point. I don't care if I woke up at the crack of dawn ready to go, DON'T CALL ME before noon - unless one of the exceptions apply.

Older people don't seem to care what requests you make...they do what they want. My step-father poo-poos me when I tell him I'm tired, saying that I'm too young to be tired. He has a lot of energy. He also takes long naps during the day to tide him over. He denies that he does but any time he says he's going to go watch TV, give him fifteen minutes and he will be dead to the world.

He watches a lot of TV.

Last week I was in my car for 15 hours attempting to evacuate Houston. I spoke to my step-father several times on the phone from the car. I kept telling him, "I'm going to be tired tomorrow." He said he knew I would be. That was my subtle way of saying "let me sleep in when I get there" because he tends to wake me early. I was going to be much less subtle on that point once I got to his place. The fact that I came home and didn't make it to Arkansas didn't change the fact that I was tired the next day.

He called me before 9:00 a.m. the next morning to check in on me. (Two weeks before that he called before 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday to tell me some family gossip I didn't care anything about.) He made some comment about he had slept in that morning. Oh really? Well, thank GOD he did because he would have called me earlier otherwise!

It might be good to point out that I turn my phone off a lot because of these early morning calls. It was on the day after I tried to evacuate because I was making alternate plans as to where to stay and was expecting a call. That fact does not override the rule because my step-father was NOT the person that was supposed to call me.

Which brings me to this morning. Thankfully I turned my phone off because I got up for a while and then laid back down and slept until 11:00 a.m. I checked my caller ID and my tenant (I have a rental property...the tenant first rented the house from my grandmother 30 years ago and has been in the house ever since. She pays $80 a month in rent.) had called at 9:00 a.m. My first thought was she sustained damage from the hurricane (I'd meant to call her earlier in the week to check on that but got busy.). My second thought was, I'd just finally cashed her rent check a day or two ago and she might be checking up on that. It was the latter - the house was fine, as far as she knows, from the storm.

So all these early morning calls from senior citizens makes me understand why Denny's would spend so much money promoting the Early Bird Specials. (See me running screaming from the room!)