I can be something like civil to moderately quiet morning people who are just saying “good morning” to me. As long as no one asks me to DO anything other than sip coffee first thing in the morning, I’m good.
What I’ve always wanted to do to the overly cheery and smugly superior “morning people” is to wake them up at around 2 a.m. chirping, “Get up, sleepyhead! You’re missing the best part of the day!”
mm yes. Coffee is good in the mornings. Sometimes I can even manage to make it for myself when I’m on auto-pilot or for some reason is sentient enough to measure the grounds.
Generally it takes me about 30 minutes to an hour to actually be awake. There are times when I wake up and I am just… awake… they are far and few between though. meaning that I have to get up around 7 for an 8:30 class, just to give me 20-30 minutes to hit the snooze button and finally submit to the inevitable movement needed to get going. This is then followed by auto pilot till I am at school and can buy my first cup of java for the day which wakes me up enough to pay attention in class.
The main reason why I am grumpy in the mornings… is the chipper people. I agree with that. That and my Grandma felt this was the best time of day (before I’d had coffee or toast and had just stumbled out of the bedroom) to lecture me on the latest thing she was having a problem with about me (my clothing, my hair, my friends…). I’ve learned to avoid people or just get the hell outta there fast so I don’t bite someone’s head off.
Camping is yet another story again as well (maybe it’s just cuz I don’t feel stressed about where I am and what I have to do that day. That must be it)
While it may certify me as an outcast, along with Kalhoun’s husband, I am one of those ‘late to bed, early to rise’ types. And most of the time, I am up well ahead of the alarm clock.
Yes, I was the first in the office, started the coffee, well ahead of the secretaries arrivals, and seemed to piss off everyone in the office by my natural morning smile. (Hey, it wasn’t intentional, I just was the “chipper” one in the AM.)
Now banished from Corporate America (thank the Good Lord for small things), and run my own business, no issues here. If I want to do my desk/paperwork at 3am, at either end of a sleep, who gives a rat’s? Just my cat, and he has elevated sleep to an art form.
I guess I just have too much fun being awake…
You night people can come play with me. I can’t concentrate in the daytime-too bright and noisy. The only problem is I have to get up to be at work at 9 (on the rare occasions I make it on time) and I tend to sleep through my alarms-heck once I slept through all 5 of my alarms, beeper going off, telephone ringing and people leaving messages to ask where the heck I was. Weekends I stay up until 5 and can sleep until 10PM. Oh, I also can sleep anytime and anywhere. Ever fall asleep in the shower? I have! I even got a sleep study to find out why I sleep so deeply and they said nothing was wrong. If I only could work from 2pm to 10pm I would be so much happier. Don’t believe me? Then why am I typing this at 3:45AM instead of sleeping?
This is great! I’m loving this thread because it makes me feel I’m not such a freak. When I’m not working I can easily do this, and have done it, though more common for me is 18-20 hours awake, 14-16 hours asleep. My absolute average is 12 hours asleep. As someone else said, I hate going to bed, but I love to sleep and I hate getting up. I can also go to sleep anywhere, and I can go to sleep anytime. One day it might be 7am, another day it might be 5pm.
Bliss is having no responsibilities to time, being able to stay up for as long as you want, going to bed anytime of the day or night you’re tired, and sleeping for however long you feel like sleeping. That’s bliss.
My father, who’s never slept past 7am in his life, thinks I’m a freakazoidal life form. He has no idea what my sleeping habits REALLY are, or he’d ask for DNA tests.
I’m generally pretty friendly when I do wake up though. As a teenager, I once told my mom to “fuck off” when she was trying to wake me up. The resulting chaos pounded it into my psyche that I should keep my mouth shut unless it was nice.
The funny thing is, although i love to sleep in late and do it often, if i do have to get up then i really am a bit of a morning person.
For me, the real hurdle is getting out of bed, but once i’m up i usually don’t walk around like a zombie for hours. And if i can get straight into a nice warm shower, i’m ready to face to face whatever the world has to offer.
My rule of thumb? Wait until I am coherent enough to talk first. It’s not a personal thing, I just don’t talk much at all until I am awake…and that doesn’t just mean maintaining a vertical position for me.
My ex hubby was just like me. We would both get up, have coffee, get ready for work and ride in together. Not a word was spoken until we got out of the car and kissed good bye for the day. That’s the only thing I miss about him.
Sweetie, just don’t say ANYTHING, trust me, we will NOT notice, we are too busy trying to remember what our own names are, and where we left our coffee cups.
Okay, first of all, the fact that YOU “don’t know how to act” is YOUR problem. Sorry not saying that snidely at all. Just an honest fact. We aren’t “acting like zombies” we ARE zombies. We really do not notice you are there, UNLESS you FORCE and insist upon us relating to you in your own way (i.e. saying good morning, waiting with that expectant half-smile, half reproachful air, etc).
The moments are only “awkward” because that’s what YOU are feeling. And as for us “acting like you’re the enemy”??? That, again, is your perception of how we’re acting. What we’re feeling and THINKING, when confronted with an insistant morning greeting is something along the lines of:
*errrrk, words…argggh PAINFUL words, response required. ARrrggggh thinking…even MORE painful…where’s my damn COFFEE CUP!!! Must think.
All of this while staring blankly at the person who delivered the “good morning”. (ps, the frown you see is likely concentration, NOT anger at you).
So, the advice? Don’t worry, we are NOT thinking awful thoughts about you just because we are staring blankly and frowning at the computer screen, so YES, the answer is, don’t SAY anything.
If you canNOT contain yourself from some sort of greeting, a small nod or smile is the least painful to we zombies.
Thank you!!!
The following response meant in the nicest, but most matter of fact way…
AhA!!! I see your problem right here in THIS sentence, and I quote “…I can’t do anything to make some people act like ‘normal’ human beings in the morning…”
Not to be snappish here, but DO please define “normal”? What is happening is that you have YOUR definition of normal, and you are expecting others to abide by it.
If they don’t “chipper up” and answer your “Good morning, how are you” then they are “glaring” (believe I explained that this was a misperception on YOUR part, it’s really not a glare, it’s an expression of pain and concentration brought on by NOT being allowed to “come to”).
And as to the “uneasy truce”?? Why do you require an answer or response from these people? Based on what you say, it is NOT to “be normal” but to ease your sense of discomfort at the silence they are “causing”.
See, this is what some of us were talking about earlier in the post. If you have as a loved one, or co-worker, someone that you KNOW is not a morning person, WHY do you insist that it is THEIR problem? That they are somehow being “abnormal” because they aren’t behaving how you’d like them to behave (i.e., answer your good morning the way YOU want them to)?
Why is it so hard to understand that if you just let “zombies” alone, they will come around??? And that their failure to do so when YOU would like them to, well, it just ain’t about you??
shrug If you want to flip out and take offense, that’s not my problem. You might not want to believe it, but I had good intentions by asking how people who have trouble functioning in the morning want to be treated.
And yes, I do define normal behavior as being able to say a simple “good morning.” I guess that’s my problem. Sorry.
LOL, SWEETIE!!! You are TOTALLY missing my point. A person who is merely not replying to you, or “grunts and glares” is NOT doing what you THINK or imagine he’s doing.
And my intentions were good and honest as well. The BEST way to treat “morning zombies” IS to just let us alone for awhile, til we wake up!!!
That’s not being snotty, OR “flipping out”! It’s the God’s honest truth. The honest to goodness “best” thing to do with morning zombies is to give us a chance to “become alive” before we’re forced to respond etc. Now, when I said “it’s your problem” I did not, and I stated this clearly in my previous post, mean that in a derogatory or snotty way.
What I meant was that you are taking it ON as “your problem”. In other words, and based on your previous post saying that it was “awkward” and all, that YOU were thinking something like “Oh my gosh, he/she’s not talking!!! He/she’s frowning and being COMPLETELY SILENT, and THAT makes me uncomfortable. I’d better break the silence and the ice and make things all better”.
Now, with another morning person that may very well be true, but the “uncomfortable silence and ‘frowning’ that the morning zombie is doing does NOT fall under this category” Hence, you’re making yourself uncomfortable and imagining that the silence and “frowning” means something it doesn’t.
Trust me, all it means is that your office “morning zombie” is attemtping to “come to life” he/she needs varying degrees (as other posters have written, we all can tolerate various degrees of noise before we’re “alive”) of silence and being left alone so that we can come to life. That’s all I meant by it being “your problem”. NOT that you were, or had one. Okay? (smile).
And so far as it being “normal” for a person to say good morning in the morning, Yes, for YOU that’s “normal”. Are you not able to realize that for others it might NOT be “normal” or to ALLOW them that?
Think of it this way, do you like chocolate? Or vanilla? Or maybe both?
If you were a chocolate lover, would you think of vanilla lovers as “not normal people” simply because they didn’t think of chocolate the EXACT SAME WAY you do???
Of course you wouldn’t!!!
Trust me, I didn’t mean any of this post in a mean or accusatory way. If you’re new to posting, some things can “sound” harsher or “meaner” than the poster intends them to.
Ah. So I guess you missed the fifty previous posts in this thread saying, “Please don’t talk to me in the mornings, I don’t like it.”
No, I saw a few posts saying it, but I saw a lot more posts written by people who claimed to not be “morning people,” and didn’t expand on it further. I still maintain that I didn’t ask it to be snarky or superior. I’m sorry if my question bothered you and CanvasShoes.
It didn’t “bother” us. It just seems that you missed, and continue to miss, the answer to the questions that you asked.
You asked “what to do” around “non-morning” people.
Many, many people had addressed this before AND after your questions by saying, in effect, “If you work with, live with, or are in love with a non-morning person, do NOT t-a-l-k to us until we wake up”.
THAT’s ALL. And this solution is not in ANY way meant to make chirpy morning people feel bad, or “wrong”. It’s a simple, effective solution.
But even after everyone answered and explained this, you then went ON to complain about how “abnormally” these “zombies” were being by not catering to YOUR expectations of how “normal” people should act in the morning.
THAT, after we’d explained to you and other morning people was what prompted our additional explanations and corrections to you.
Nothing more, and definitely nothing “snarky”. Just the facts ma’am.
You see, Spreeee, it’s very simple. Your circadian rhythms are still on the fritz from the move from the North Pole. Once you’re through Dentistry school, though, there should be no problem.
That’s right bitch.
Hey, if you were my roomate I would fucking wake you up at 6:00 am every day and beat the crap out of you until you fell into line you lazy piece of shit.
First of all, I’m not really even talking about you. If you have your own room then sleep all day for all I care. I’m talking about roomates I’ve had in the past where I either had to share living quarters or they would get with an attitude (like yours). It did affect the other roommates because we had to tiptoe around the house so we don’t wake the sleeping baby.
Christ, leave your baggage in the hall, okay? No one here is your roommate, a fact for which we are all eternally grateful.
No, I didn’t go on to complain after “everyone answered and explained this.” I conceded that it might just be an insurmountable barrier. Hardly complaining.
But you win, okay? Point taken–I won’t say anything to my not-a-morning-person co-worker on Monday morning.
And MAYbe if YOU didn’t TYPE every other WORD in CAPS, you wouldn’t give off the impression of FLIPPING OUT and being snarky.
Heh. When left to my own devices, I’m a stay up until 3, sleep until 10 kind of person.
However, due to things out of my control, I have to get up at 5 on weekdays (my bus comes at 6, school starts at 7:20). I usually fall asleep anywhere between 10:30 to 1 on school nights, and I usually take a nap from 4-5/5:30 in the afternoon, but my mom told the psychiatrist I was doing this, and he said it’d be better if I didn’t. So I’ve been trying to stop.
Weekends, though…I can sleep until 1 in the afternoon, and still take a nap.
LOL, it’s hardly every other word, just the few I want emphasized. If this board allowed italics or bold without a huge annoying process to bold or italicize just one word, I wouldn’t HAVE to use caps!
Also, I made it quite clear thoughout my entire post that I was merely being matter of fact and was in no way saying I thought you were to blame or that you were being “bad”. I mentioned that several times. Softened it with smiles and reassurances throughout. You would laugh at yourself for thinking I’m the least “snarky” if you met me in person. The CAPS?? They’re where my voice naturally goes UP! Sorry, I’m one of those PERKY! people, only just not in the morning, mwaah ha ha! (and would someone PLEASE tell me what “snarky” really means? I’m old. Was it borrowed from Aussie slang and brought into modern American culture to sound “cool” or something?)
I wasn’t trying to win was just seeing that what me and many other “zombie” posters had said, in like another poster mentioned about 50 times, was not being made clear to you, and was trying out different ways of expressing it to see if I could get that we (zombies) are NOT trying to be “mean” when we don’t talk or look “frown-ey” in the morning or whatever.
If you mistook my net-tense for “snarky” I apologize.