MONDAY, July 1, 7am.
You know it's fraught, but you do it anyhow.
You hit snooze.
You know Monday will be more bearable in 10 minutes' time; then you'll speed-dial up the Monday morning mayhem. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy!
Ahhh, bliss.
Then the alarm sounds at 7.09am.
"WAIT, WHAT, WHEN?!" I'm thinking; my eight-year-old uses this phrase when she's perplexed.
Since when did we lose a minute of snooze?
Snooze used to be a solid 10 when I was a uni student. In fact, it was more like three or four lots of 10 minutes, one after the other. Never nine! (Nine by four is beyond me, especially at that time of day!!)
Turns out, the iPhone's default nine-minute snooze is Apple's way of paying homage to clock history. Once upon a time, mechanical clocks had to offer snooze in nine-minute intervals because in order to make snooze work, the button was attached to the part of the clock that controls minutes. The easiest way to engineer that, and give people the longest nap, was to set it for nine minutes.
It's not a new Apple feature; it's just been a while between snoozes for me!
Since when did we lose a minute of snooze? Snooze used to be a solid 10 when I was a uni student. In fact, it was more like three or four lots of 10 minutes, one after the other. Never nine! (Nine by four is beyond me, especially at that time of day!!)
While the iron heats up, I give myself a good talking to about how it would have made better sense to press the school uniforms last night. After getting to the bottom of the washing pile at the weekend, however, who wants to iron?
I contemplate only ironing school shirt collars and cuffs but notice the sun is already peeking through the clouds.
Their jumpers will be off by recess!
Moving on to lunch boxes, I feel grateful that I shopped around over the weekend.
Black Barn Farm Stanley apples, Sould on Life bliss balls and RAD Growers carrots from the Albury-Wodonga Farmers' Market. Tick.
Banana bread left over from Friday. Tick.
A scrape of spicy capsicum dip to go with veggie sticks. Tick. Just.
With Victorian schools already in holiday mode, I'm lulled into a false sense of feeling like we're already over the lunch box line. Of course, that's a dumb theory! NSW students still need packed lunches for another half-week ... and possibly until they leave uni or TAFE at about 28.
At 7.50am, I push my high school-aged daughter out the front door, telling her to not miss the school bus two blocks away if humanly possible, because I don't have nine minutes spare to drop her to school.
"Run like the wind," I yell after her.
"But watch out for the rubbish trucks! They're early this morning and everywhere." (Their drivers did not hit snooze!!)
At 8am sharp, our 15-year-old labradoodle starts barking, fearing her walk to the bus stop may be in serious jeopardy.
I tell my youngest that I'm having a shower and she'll need to get dressed pronto today because our dog's happiness depends on it.
"You always take so long in the shower!" she whines.
"I take two minutes," I whine back, "Four if I flip the timer over.
"We're losing time talking about this though!"
My youngest settles on a low ponytail instead of the preferred high one, securing precious seconds and locking in the dog's Monday bus stop walk.
On the downhill walk, our dog wants to stop to scratch and sniff absolutely everything but the roses.
Heading into town at 8.50am, I am buoyed by the prospect of swinging by one of my favourite baristas, right next door to my first job.
Then the unthinkable occurs to me.
In my haste to get out of the house, I leave my KeepCup on the sink.
I feel like it's average form to break Plastic Free July with a takeaway coffee cup on the very first day of the month.
Alas, no proper coffee for me this morning.
You snooze, you lose!
