Morning Tigger

Head to “Blogs I Follow” in the Reader. Scroll down to the third post in the list. Take the third sentence in the post, and work it into your own.

************************

I’ve written before about how different Terry and I are in the morning. He’s Tigger. I’m Eeyore.

He Rises with morning light… I groan and roll over and pretend I’m still asleep until the alarm goes off.

He bounces out of bed, hits the floor running, can’t wait to get his breakfast and get busy with his chosen project of the day. I stretch under the covers, sigh, reluctantly swing my feet over the side of the bed and search blindly for my slippers. I hate a cold floor first thing in the morning.

He whistles. I plug my ears. He bops. I shuffle. He bounces. I drag. He loves oatmeal. Just give me coffee.

Once, when we were newlyweds, he came springing into the bedroom at 5 a.m. and BOUNCED the mattress, saying “Get up! Get up! It’s a beautiful day!” After he recovered, he promised he’d never do that again. The bruises around his neck faded quickly, and I wasn’t arrested.

The down side of his morning cheer, of course, is that by 7 p.m. he’s become Eeyore. I woulldn’t go so far as to say that I’m Tigger at that point, because I’m old now and the energy isn’t quite as fresh as it used to be. But I’m maybe more like Pooh, cheerful in a quiet way and looking forward to an evening of good conversation, maybe some TV, maybe a walk outside in the good weather. Understand, the conversation has to be fairly brief because he’s asleep on the sofa by 7:05. If he’s outdoors, we do much better. He loves outdoors, and he’ll even stay awake while we take a walk. As for watching TV, that’s a solitary activity for me even if he’s in the same room. Sometimes his snoring drowns out the sound.

Why? Why are so many couples on completely different clocks? Beats me. Must be that old “opposites attract” thing going on. There’s no point in complaining about it. He’s not going to change, and neither am I. So we’ve learned to adapt and accept, and to realize that our best “together” hours are around noon until maybe three or four. That’s cool. We’re both awake, feeling good, and able to communicate without bloodshed.

Compromise can be a beautiful thing 🙂