Alarm

I love to sleep, it’s really one of my favorite activities, er, pastimes. Unfortunately, the world and I do not see eye-to-eye on the thorough enjoyment one may have in hitting the snooze button just…one….more….time. Nope, the world expects me to “be on time” as if that is important, please. Truly, the inventor of the clock was a sadist.

Reluctantly, I’ve altered my dearly held beliefs to accommodate ‘the world’ and I arrive on time to work each day, most times early. Don’t get too excited, I don’t have to be here too early in the morning, but it is morning none-the-less, and I’m here half typing this, half working, one hand on the Sumatra, no sugar, no cream, just as much caffeine as legally possible.

So, to the point, while I’ve accustomed to this ‘view’ on the world, as obscene as it is, I still hold tight to a few small beliefs in my religion of sleep; 5 in the morning is not time to get up, it never will be, it never should be. Unless you milk cows, maybe, and I stress maybe, because I’d be pretty ticked off to have someone violate me like that before dawn.

So can you guess what time I’ve been waking up in the morning twice a week? Just take a wild guess…I’ll wait, really…go ahead, GUESS!!! Ahem, yes, that is correct, 5 am.

And I am not happy about it.

Tuesday is collection day for recyclables. For some reason, the truck full of men who have pursued this career, park outside my window and proceed to throw about cans for oh, maybe a half hour. I have no idea why. We have hardly any offerings. My roommate and I subsist on Raman, the lovely couple living on the second floor have spent most of the summer on vacation, and our dear landlady seems to not produce any sort of trash, maybe she eats out, I don’t know, I just know there were precisely three large plastic bottles, two broken down boxes, and one empty six-pack of Heineken bottles for pick up. I know. I counted. So exactly what in hell were they doing out there for so long Tuesday morning?

I’ve developed a theory after a half hour of racket yesterday morning. This, followed by an encore half hour experimentation on the ability to back the truck up, one inch at a time. During this experimentation, the warning beep the vehicle spits out with alarming volume kept a steady beat to my swearing, stomping, and slamming of windows.

My theory? The neighbors are secretly plotting against me. Sometime in the night, after I’ve flopped down onto my ever comfortable floor mat, they gather outside my window and fill our recycle bins with all the recyclables within a square mile of my window.

Why do they do this? One might ask, I’m not entirely, sure. Do they hate me? Maybe, but really, I’m too cute to hate…at least for too long, right Tidy?

Do the collectors hate me? More likely they’re in just as much of an early morning stupor as I am and are just easily confused.

Does the city hate me? Naw, they hate the collectors, hence making the poor guys work at such an ungodly hour.

Am I about to go on a sleep-deprived killing spree? Hmmm, likely. Garbage collection is tomorrow.

And oh, before you say get to bed earlier, you just try and sleep with those bratty kids making all sorts of racket outside your window until near 1 in the morning. They don’t respond well to threats, either, tried that.