Despertar

crack, dawn

I hate morning more than any other time of day. I stay up late, so I am always incredibly sluggish and resentful when I wake up. When I earn my millions, I'm going to commission a team of scientists to invent a sleeping pill that allows the user to enter an autopilot state, while still asleep, at dawn, then wake up fully dressed and already at work around noon.

Mornings out here are maybe not quite as bad as ordinary East-Coast ones, but still have their issues. Invariably, I wake up at six-thirty with my face pressed into my wireless mouse and my laptop inches away, cell phone tucked into the crook of my elbow where I can feel the vibrations when the alarm goes off. I never know what I'm going to wear. I can never find my toothbrush. I check my email and Writing.com activity while I tame my hair. I slog out the door by eight, hoping to catch the BART shuttle. I never, ever catch it. I watch it and its successors roll past as I walk the mile and a half to the train station.

All those things are constants. Variables include (1) whether I get a seat on the train, which determines (2) whether I get to read for twenty-five minutes; (3) whether anyone answers their phone to keep me company on the San Francisco-side walk to my building; (4) whether the bay air is absolutely frigid or just kind of cold, and (5) whether I was thoughtful enough to bring a weather-appropriate jacket; and (6) whether I immediately get the light that lets me cross the street in the first block, which determines (7) whether I pass the station-side bakery with its (literally) irresistible fresh pastry smells.

For all those variables, though, and all the combinations and permutations thereof, I only ever walk into work grumpy and cold. With or without powdered sugar on my face.

But I'm always nice to everybody. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed per my years of East-Coast bootlicker training. I say "Good morning!!" to my boss, walk around greeting everyone, incorporating their personal details to make them feel good. No one would ever guess how much I hate my life for the first three hours of the day.

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This morning, for instance, nothing was ironed, and I couldn't find the plain white tee I always pair with everything when I don't know what else to wear. My legs are still pretty smooth from yesterday, and you never waste that, so I wanted to wear a skirt or a dress, but I couldn't find my Intensive Moisture lotion, so there went that.

I ended up wearing a burlap sack to work. Point Allison.

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1. How many kids do you want?
Secretly, three. But I'll probably only have two.

2. Do you know their names yet?
Depending on how adventurous my future husband is, and the community we wind up living in, I've got a couple of different sets. Unfortunately, certain people's affinity for counterintuitively spelled pseudo-ethnic names have created a culture in which black kids named anything not totally Anglo are often prejudged as being ghetto and ignorant. There goes my favorite boy's name, Dashiell, which, though it has French origins and belonged to a revered author, could easily be confused with ignorant made-up concoctions like Darshell or Shellquon. Ditto my favorite girl's name, Eja, which supposedly means "angel" in a Chippewa dialect, but rhymes with ignorant imitators Deja and Teja, and is also a homophone of Asia, which, I can't STAND it when people name their kids after places they've never been. But I do like the inoffensive Sheadon (SHAY-don), Shea for short, and I've always liked Adam and Matthew. So I guess we'll live.

3. Is "Rover" a good name?
For what, a kid, or a dog? Actually, it doesn't matter, because I wouldn't call my kid or my dog "Rover." I would maybe call a pet ferret or goldfish Rover, or Sparky, or Fido, just to be funny. Goldfish don't rove!

4. What is one quality you would/require/in your husband/wife?
That he not/splice his written/correspondences/with random, incorrectly placed/backslashes/.

5. If your husband/wife wanted or didn't want kids (opposite views on yours), would you divorce them?
I don't think I would go on a third date with someone who already knew he didn't want kids. I would certainly stop seeing him before I had the chance to fall for him. Not only would it be pointless, because we wouldn't have a future together; our life philosophies would also be so majorly different, we probably wouldn't be that compatible, anyway.

6. How would your parents feel about you adopting kids?
I didn't know this was a kid survey. Sorry, guys. But, I guess they'd be happy for me, more so if I did it because of fertility problems. My mom has this idea that human biological instinct makes it impossible to love adopted kids as much as begotten ones. If I were to adopt by choice, which I definitely might do regardless, it would take her a long time to warm up to the idea, and probably to the kid.

7. Do you know what you want to do in life yet?
I'm developing a clearer idea. I want to help people, I want to make children's live better, I want to advocate for education. I was telling Justin the other day, this summer has probaby been in my top three, in the sense that it's some of the most meaningful work I've ever done.

8. Note one thing that no one else knows.
I bite my right knee when I have an orgasm. The bruises didn't fade till about two weeks after I got to California.

9. What are you afraid of (in the future)?
That our planet will become so overrun with trash, we'll have to move to satellite colonies in space, where advanced technology will make even our basic physical functions obsolete, resulting in the evolutionary loss of bone mass and personal autonomy.

10. What do you look forward to most (in the future)?
Oh, that future. Having a baby, of course.

11. If your fiance didn't like your parents, and your parents didn't like your fiance, would you still marry him/her?
My mom is very insightful about people's character and behavior, so I would certainly take her thoughts into consideration. My dad doesn't outright dislike most people, except racists and politicians, and he almost never issues judgment on anyone I'm dating, so I would probably take his opposition pretty seriously.

12. If your fiance told you to pick between your family and him/her, who would you pick?
I mean, the truth is, people make stupid, selfish decisions for love, so I can't say I definitely wouldn't do the wrong thing there. But on principle, you're never supposed to choose the person who issues such an ultimatum. Also, over half of marriages end in divorce, but my family will always be my family.

13. Have you ever said "I love you" and not meant it?
I so rarely say that under any circumstances.

14. Do you say "I love you" casually, or do you take it very seriously, and only say it when you really mean it?
Marcus got me into the habit of saying it constantly, at the end of every phone call, before every separation, however short, to the point where I noticed and felt wounded any time we didn't say it. He still says it whenever we talk now, and where I once was always eager to return the sentiment, I never say it back anymore. I think that whole experience has inhibited me from ever throwing it away again. The closest I've ever come so far, with Justin, was to say "I like you a lot, and probably more than that." He laughed at my reticence and we moved on. I can't see saying it again till someone else says it first.

15. Have you seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off? What did you think of it?
Yes I have many times, and I liked it. My favorite part is the delivery of the line Bueller, you little son of a bitch. It always makes me laugh.

16. Are you into politics?
Interested, but not involved. I try to stay informed, but I know the media coverage filter adds a whole sheen of propaganda.

17. Why is politics important/not important?
Because it affects most aspects of our everyday lives. Our current administration brokered overseas "deals" that made gas so expensive, people don't even go to the movies anymore. It drew up an education reform plan so flawed, it sucks money away from schools whose students are already failing proficiency tests. And it issued "generous" tax breaks that pulled money out of every federal program in every city, including government-subsidized housing. McCain has already promised to keep digging us further into all three of those major holes, plus the even bigger ones of national security and healthcare, and yet people will STILL VOTE FOR HIM ON THE BASIS OF TRITE ISSUES LIKE ABORTION AND GAY MARRIAGE. Or because they DON'T TRUST BLACK PEOPLE.

18. If you could only have one video/computer game, which game would it be?
I'm not even going to waste the eight characters and two spaces it would take to answer this question.

19. You're stuck on a desert island...you can only bring one person, who would it be?
Aaron. He already knows how to hunt pigs and saute coconut.

20. If you could live in any movie, which movie would you live in?
I love the feel of Gotham City, but it has a pretty bad crime problem and the public transportation system isn't safe. Plus, left unchecked, Wayne Industries could easily take on Walmartian proportions and go totally corrupt, and then who would protect us from the constant onslaught of evil?