They say that half the people would never finish their work if it wasn’t for the eleventh hour,but I personally prefer the zero hour.
The zero hour is the time between the alarm clock ringing the first time and the time it rings after you’ve pressed the snooze button. That glorious period of snuggling in your warm bed while you can hear the rain outside, knowing that you have a precious 15 more minutes, before your feet touch the cold floor. Every single morning my alarm rings at 6:30, and every day I put it on snooze , and on special days I put it on snooze twice. I bargain with myself for a few more moments of the zero hour. I rationalise my need for those extra minutes of warmth with lines like ‘ I’ll bathe in the evening, anyways I had a bath last night so it’s not even 24 hours between baths’ , ‘it’s too cold to bathe anyways’ , ‘ I don’t have to iron my clothes am wearing the wrinkle free trousers today’ ‘ I am having cornflakes for breakfast so saving time to heat the food’.
Every day I come up with new and ingenious excuses to get up late, until the reality of a life beyond my blanket is too glaring to ignore.
What amazes me though , is that I still need to make excuses to myself. I mean I live in a hostel , whether I get up early or late , nobody is bothered . Nobody is going to question me about what I eat ,or do I eat at all in the morning, and yet I have this tug of war with myself every morning when I wake up – to snooze or not to snooze. I guess it is the mother in me , which has decided to continue to do what my mom did when I was in school, because the mother in me realizes that if I don’t care about myself , then no one else might. You look out for yourself, and that’s an important lesson to learn when you are living alone.
Nevertheless the zero hour is my privilege, a privilege I might not have in a few years when I have children of my own to prod awake.
The zero hour is the time between the alarm clock ringing the first time and the time it rings after you’ve pressed the snooze button. That glorious period of snuggling in your warm bed while you can hear the rain outside, knowing that you have a precious 15 more minutes, before your feet touch the cold floor. Every single morning my alarm rings at 6:30, and every day I put it on snooze , and on special days I put it on snooze twice. I bargain with myself for a few more moments of the zero hour. I rationalise my need for those extra minutes of warmth with lines like ‘ I’ll bathe in the evening, anyways I had a bath last night so it’s not even 24 hours between baths’ , ‘it’s too cold to bathe anyways’ , ‘ I don’t have to iron my clothes am wearing the wrinkle free trousers today’ ‘ I am having cornflakes for breakfast so saving time to heat the food’.
Every day I come up with new and ingenious excuses to get up late, until the reality of a life beyond my blanket is too glaring to ignore.
What amazes me though , is that I still need to make excuses to myself. I mean I live in a hostel , whether I get up early or late , nobody is bothered . Nobody is going to question me about what I eat ,or do I eat at all in the morning, and yet I have this tug of war with myself every morning when I wake up – to snooze or not to snooze. I guess it is the mother in me , which has decided to continue to do what my mom did when I was in school, because the mother in me realizes that if I don’t care about myself , then no one else might. You look out for yourself, and that’s an important lesson to learn when you are living alone.
Nevertheless the zero hour is my privilege, a privilege I might not have in a few years when I have children of my own to prod awake.
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