Time In a Bottle

I hate that commercial! You know the one I'm talking about? Its for Zyrtec and the lady starts off by saying "You know that song, 'Time in a Bottle?'" No. No, I don't. I know 'Genie in a Bottle' and I could even do a cool little dance to it that we made up in 8th grade. Anyhow, I think its a stupid saying, and the commercial is even worse. I was looking for it on You Tube in case you haven't seen it, but I couldn't find it. That's even better, because now you don't have to watch it. I found this funny kid's parody of it instead.

I get where the concept comes from, though. I never seem to have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do. I know, I know, I could stop blogging and start doing, but this is one of the things I want to do. These are all the other things I want to do in the next hour and a half before I have to leave for work: make banana bread, fold the laundry, clean the house, make more necklaces, have quiet time with God, pay bills.

I think all this is why I have grown to love the mornings so much. I haven't always (ever, really) been a morning person. Just ask my parents or my college roommates. However, it is so nice to have a reason to get up on a morning I might otherwise sleep in. Its like a head-start. For example, this morning after I dropped Ethan off at work at 8:00, I went to Starbucks, got a hot chai (for free!) to warm me up (it was 25 degrees in Gainesville last night!) and sat and wrote my grocery list. Chicken enchiladas for dinner tonight. All this happened when I could have just been drooling in bed, suffering from leg cramps.

I think it might be from watching too many episodes of Mr. Rodgers growing up (Mom didn't believe in cable, which I am thankful for), but I just love sitting around, enjoying watching the world function, seeing police officers and business men and people listening to iPods read newspapers and drink their coffee. The one weird part of my scene at Starbucks was the couple listening to iPods. They had a stick of lady's deodorant just sitting out on the table along with their steamy cups. Hmm. Besides that, the rest of my morning was very Mr. Rodgers. At Publix, the only other customer was a man in a tie who bought $40 worth of food to give to a local charity. That's a lot of food when most of it is boxes of mac & cheese for fifty cents. To top it all off, I even had a conversation with the man who collects quarters out of the laundry machine. This was exciting, because for a couple weeks now I had a theory that they collected the quarters on Wednesdays. My quarters always make such a lonely sound when I drop them in, and finally my theory was confirmed! I think the guy thought I was a little weird.

This is all to say two things. One, I love the mornings because everything seems so calm and friendly, especially running errands. Two, I feel like there is no limit on what I can accomplish when I have the whole day ahead of me.

The funniest part of my priority sorting is things that should be on the "have to" list end up on the "get around to it when you can list." These things usually include eating and showering and usually get replaced by watering the house plants, window-shopping for my dream living room on IKEA, or alphabetizing our DVD collection. I can't decide if that makes me sound more like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets or Phoebe from Friends. Unfortunately, its already 11:00, so I better go pick two things off my list.