MARCH 27, 2002

Today is the day to wonder, what's up with white chocolate?

Zulkey.com works for you. Why not work for it?

It's 7:15 a.m. as I write this and I really don't want to be awake. For somebody with various jobs, hobbies, things to do, etc., I really am quite a hideous waker-upper. Anybody who has lived with me can attest that I am no stranger to slapping my snooze alarm for, oh, a good two, two and a half hours, if I'm in the mood.

Why do I do this? Because I trick myself at night. At night I think, "I'll get up and clean, and do some work, and go to the gym." And then the next morning, when my alarm goes off at 5:15, I wonder, "Who in God's name set my alarm? They must be insane!" And sleep until 7:15. And I won't re-set my alarm, mind you, because re-setting it means I have to wake up just a tiny bit, and that won't do.

And then, for further trickery, when my alarm does go off, I think that a scant few more minutes will mean the difference between fatigue all day and being fresh as a daisy. You know the phrase, "Ten more minutes?" Well, I actually coined the phrase, "Two more minutes." Who needs TWO minutes? What good will that do you?

But I'm not a napper, and I don' sleep in ridiculously late. One thing I guess is that I just love bed. When you're lying in bed you don't notice the things you do when you get out of bed--like I do right now. Right now, my hair is a mat, for some reason my eyes are leaking, they're crusty to boot, my glasses won't balance on my face correctly, my breath doesn't seem so aromatic, I have to pee and I'm sweaty. But when you're in bed all you think is, "Aaah, bed."

Plus, I am a very vivid dreamer. I can tell you some crazy ones, like the one from the other night where I directed a commercial for Hewlett-Packard starring Rufus Wainwright. Or the one where I had a roommate who stole everybody's shoe polish. Or the one where George W. Bush asked me to buy him a chocolate-chip cookie but I could only find oatmeal raisin. A good amount of time, these dreams end up as stories, and even if they don't, they're still pretty fascinating, so I like to stay in bed longer to see how things pan out.

So anyway, I'm about to go do my early morning toilet rituals, and inevitably I'll have to rush to the train and be crabby for the rest of the morning. If I only could have woken up at 6:45 instead of 7:15 I wouldn't have had this problem. I've tried everything, from setting my alarm clock way across the room to buying an extremely loud alarm clock to trying ti will myself to wake up the night before: "I WILL wake up tomorrow!"

But it probably won't happen. I could just try going to bed earlier, I guess, but why would I want to miss "Simpsons" reruns?