Everyone who really knows me, knows that I go to bed early, by most standards. The latest that I ever go to bed is 10 PM. It takes me at least an hour or two after that to actually slip into an unconcious state. I have to work at it. I find that playing a handheld video game helps in this process. Nothing stimulating. Video Poker or Scrabble. I go to bed early because regardless of how late I go to bed, I always wake up early. I usually start waking up at around 4 or 5 AM....but that's too early to actually get up...so I burrow under the covers and pretend that I'm sleeping and every 5 minutes peek out to check the clock until it's 6 AM. 6 AM isn't too bad. I can get up and have a cup of coffee at 6 AM without feeling too guilty. Last night...or this morning if you want to be technical, we didn't get home from the our Minnesota visit until 2 AM. So I slept in until 7 AM. Now I'm all off schedule. I had to drive into our little gas station on the corner of our little town and buy a newspaper. Several newspapers because I thought I'd pick up a newspaper for my parents while I was there. Then I went over to see my parents to collect my dogs (my parents were taking care of my dogs while were were in Minnesota and it didn't seem like a good idea to pick anything up at 2 AM). I was able to grab my first cup of coffee of the morning while we visited. Now I'm back here and I didn't have to make coffee because my husband made the coffee. I need to make breakfast though. I suppose the whole day will be off and irregular. I'll have to go to bed early tonight and see if I can get back on schedule for tomorrow. I hate going to bed late.

PS. The crayfish traps I baited yesterday yielded a bucket full of crayfish this morning. There were so many that they were escaping from the bucket and crawling through my kitchen. I had to round them up to toss them into the boiling pot. Now all I have to do is clean them. I'd better go pick the lettuce from the garden too. I feel like the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.

Cliche of the Day

Queer Duck (Fish). An odd person. Why the animal should be a "duck" or a "fish" rather than something else (such as a "bat," which many people regard as an animal of odd behavior) is hard to say. "Duck" has served to mean a person since the 19th century, starting in the United States as slang. Thus, Mark Twain in Roughing It (1872): "Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?"