Good morning, spring break

I woke as usual today, at 5:43ish, to feed the cats who meowed outside our bedroom door. Unlike most mornings, today I crawled back into bed. I snuggled against my husband and lay in bed happy, knowing my day was wide open and free. Except at 2:30 when I neve to remember to pick up our daughter from band rehearsal. I can’t forget that.

Our window was lifted a few inches, and birds twittered and trilled in the full moon blue morning.

When I did rise at 6:30 — the same time my husband and son grogged out of bed — I was wide awake and ready to go. This is how our daughter and I wake up: wide awake and ready to go. My husband and son are slower to greet the morning. I pulled on my sports bra and workout shirt, good socks for gardening (cycling socks are great for gardening — they are fitted, athletic, don’t slip on my feet, and don’t let dirt in), and my quick-dry camping/boating/gardening pants. I brushed my teeth with mint toothpaste, washed my face with a citrus scrub, and applied a sunscreen moisturizer.

The only thing about getting up at the same time as everyone else is that the kitchen gets crowded. After feeding the cats, my routine dictates that I unload the dishwasher, which is fine when I’m the only one up. Our kitchen is small. Today, my husband was making tea, and who knows what our son was doing. I unloaded the dishwasher anyway; if I didn’t unload it, everyone’s breakfast dishes would pile up in the sink and they’d run out of time to do them before leaving for work and school. Better to get it done now, despite the kitchen crowds.

I dumped clean, warm water from the bottoms of white coffee cups before putting them away in the cupboard. I put away rocks glasses and shiny clean silverware.

Once the dishwasher is empty, it’s smoothie time. The only time this part of my routine varies is on weekends, when I may decide to have coffee before my smoothie, or skip the smoothie all together and have a donut 😱. By this point this morning, our son stood with the fridge door open with that vacant standing-with-the-fridge-door-open stare. I worked around him to nab the kale and the pineapple juice.

I have a love hate relationship with washing kale. I really hate washing greens of any kind, I don’t know why. Everyone in our family, maybe everyone on earth, feels this way. Nobody ever wants to make the salad because everyone hates washing the lettuce.

With the kale, though, there is a glimmer of goodness in washing it. Water droplets bead on its blue-green surface like dew drops, and it’s pretty. I watch it bead and roll off as I rinse between the ruffles.

This morning, I’m waiting for the sun to dry the dew on the grass so I can mow it. Bright purple smoothie in the sill, I sit in my favorite spot by the window and write. While he waits for the school bus, our son sits on the couch and wrestles a cat into submission. He wants to hold her. She wants to get away. “She’s purring,” he says, when I express my doubt that she’s happy.

My husband picks up the book my daughter is reading. “Sometimes I do judge a book by its cover,” she said. “Plus this one got three awards.”

“You just like the shiny stickers,” said my son. The cat finally gave up and lay with him, resigned.

“I always liked those stickers, too,” I said. Shiny foil like medals.

My smoothie is half gone. The sun is up and shines bright yellow on the porch rails and white siding of our house. The red tulip by the mailbox and the redbud in the herb bed flower gaily. It’s time to go outside.