Yawn. Snooze.

I overheard a conversation between two girls at lunchtime today.

“Oh I love sleeping in on the weekend”, said the first one. “Really? I can’t sleep past 7.00AM no matter how hard I try” was her friend’s odd reply. I thought to myself, “I wish I had that girl’s disease”.

I can sleep in almost all day, and every morning when I have to get up for work and look over at my clock I hope to myself that somehow my wife got up in the middle of the night and set my alarm an hour back so I would wake up but then realise I could go back to sleep. This indeed has never happened. This need for more sleep has caused what most would think was an insane habit. I set my alarm for 20 minutes before I have to leave. When the alarm goes off I then hit snooze for ten minutes. When I get up I then have ten minutes to get ready before I leave the house. It’s the perfect balance between thinking I can sleep for longer and having to rush around like the receptionist from the Devil Wears Prada.

Over the course of the year it has become less of a rush as I weed out pointless pre-work activities like breakfast, showering or spending time considering what to wear. It might be an idea to pick what I was going to wear the night before to save even more time but before I go to bed the morning seems so far away. And after all, my alarm is set twenty minutes before I need to leave the house, which is plenty of time to choose something. Any minor spanner in the works can make me late for work: needing to shave, a crumpled shirt which needs ironing or trying to match up a pair of socks. You might think this sounds easy, to find a pair of socks. I didn’t say find two socks. I can almost always find at least 20 socks; the problem is finding a pair. I don’t have any idea where their mates end up. I think maybe when I take off my jeans one gets stuck in the leg and then they end up in separate washing rosters that never seem to synchronize. I have given up and now just try and find the closest match. Grey and black are fine, navy and dark brown usually make the cut. I don’t like mixing patterns like stripes with no stripes or ridges with argyle. I don’t want anyone to think I’m weird. When I’m desperate to get out the door I’ll put on whatever is left hoping don’t have to go to a “shoes off” house later that evening.

If I went for a real job, which I define as one you have to dress up for, a potential employer may asked me what kind of animal I would be. First, I would think it was a stupid question. How could most animals type and use the phone – imagine a dolphin trying to send an email, you fool. I would say that I would be a bear. The interviewer would think I meant a Black Bear, industriously plucking salmon swimming against the current of a stream, or a Polar Bear stalking fat lone penguins and leaping off ice caps. I wouldn’t make any corrections, even though I would mean that I want to be a hibernating bear – one that doesn’t have to get up for anyone. Even if I woke up after sleeping for an entire season I would still want just another ten months or so. Then I would have to get up and rush around combing my fur before going on to do whatever sleepy bears do with their lives.