"Wipe Out Winco Style" and other morning adventures.

It's been a pretty crazy week at our house as Wednesday we sent Carter off on his mission.  It's a strange feeling leading up to sending a missionary off--or a college student I suppose.  You feel like the clock is ticking down and you should be making the most of your time left but you can't quite figure out what you should be doing.  So in lieu of something grand we did what we usually do when we can't think of anything--Target and Red Robin.

Carter had to be at the airport by 4:30 am so after a tearful goodbye--I'm gonna miss that kid--we headed home.  I was too keyed up to go back to bed so I decided to do my grocery shopping for the week and I have to say, grocery shopping at 5:30 am is about a million times better than grocery shopping at 5:30 pm.  There aren't any lines (but you have to dodge all of the boxes piled up in the aisles--kind of like "Wipe Out Winco Style"). So while I was jumping over cases of mac and cheese I had an epiphany of sorts.  You see, I've always been pretty much a night owl.  I've never liked getting up early and I found that I was way more productive after 8:00 pm than I ever was before 8:00 am.  Until about a year ago when I discovered I still don't like getting up early and yet by the time 8:00 pm rolls around I pretty much don't want to do anything--except sit on the couch and watch  "Ghost Hunters."  (I don't care what any of you think--it's all real!) Yet as I was cruising through Winco I thought that perhaps now I would become a lark!  I felt so good having my shopping for the week done by 6:00 am that I went home, put all the groceries away, unloaded the dishes, cleaned the kitchen and started the laundry!  I was so productive!  And then 7:00 am came at which point I crawled back in bed and didn't emerge until 10:00 am sluggish as ever.

I think I would be much more productive if I got up early.  The day has a way of getting away from me and before I know it it's dinner time, I still haven't decided on anything to cook, my errands are halfway done and I'm wondering where all my time has gone.  It's not that I haven't attempted to change my ways before.  I've tried turning on my bedroom lights first thing in the morning and breathing grapefruit essential oils which are supposed to make me more awake but instead now I have a Pavlov's dog reaction to the smell of grapefruit and I just want to hit a snooze button and roll over whenever someone cracks open a grapefruit.  But I really think that I could be more productive and help my children be more productive if I can switch this internal clock somehow.  If anyone has any great solutions I'm all ears.  As long as they don't include grapefruit.  Just the thought of it is making me tiredzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......