Hello, friends. The past month has been, in a word, WHOA. I’ve really, really enjoyed Skyping with classrooms, and I’ve been doing several visits a week! Last Friday, I did a live, forty-minute, virtual author reading via the fine folks at Qlovi; I’m hoping to have a YouTube video to share with you soon. I’ve been sharing a couple of posts a day about courtesy and manners on Ms. Civilized. Also, my little one is now crawling, and standing, and cruising, and is well on his way to walking, so I have my hands full (of baby).

Plus, there was that whole time change a few weeks ago, which has thrown me for a loop. It’s a lot harder for me to get up in the mornings to write, so every day is a struggle. But I have FOUR projects in the works, and they all need me! Two are my Infamous Ratsos stories (revising one, drafting the other), one is a novel, and one is a currently-indefinable something. I am excited about all of them, which makes it even more painful to hit snooze on that alarm (or even turn the alarm off altogether) in the morning.

Truth be told, I have always been a bit of a snooze-a-holic. In college, I’d drive my roommates crazy with the beeping of my alarm and the subsequent slaps of my hand on the button. But simply setting the alarm later never occurred to me. There’s something about waking up, then giving myself a few extra minutes of relaxation, that feels like the most luxurious, satisfying treat. I once had a conversation about this with my friend Jeff, who passed away last year. He shared my snooze addiction, and he articulated the pleasure of it in his own inimitable style: “Giving myself those extra few minutes of snooze is like a little cherry pie that is fun to eat.”

Do you get up early to write (or otherwise claim some time for yourself)? If so, how do you avoid hitting snooze? Inquiring (and exhausted) minds want to know!