What? What's Happening? I Don't Understand!

So, I have a bit of a hard time in the morning.

Nothing makes sense.  Burnt toast might make me cry. I hate everything.  Including air.

Normally, it takes about 30 minutes before I can speak properly, and anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half before I would consider myself "functional".  At least functional enough to drive a car or operate a vending machine.

I jump to all kinds of strange conclusions early in the day.

Take today, for example.  Wednesday.  Hump day.

I got up.  I don't hit the snooze, I just get up while I am still asleep.

The coffee was already on because  my alarm goes off at the same time that my mom leaves the house to go to work (about 6:30.  AM.  In the morning.  For crying out loud), so she leaves the pot on.

I fixed my coffee and put some raisin bread into the toaster, remembering for once to turn down the dial so that it wouldn't turn my breakfast into a pair meteorites.  It still scorched the edges.  Within minutes I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, eating toast, and reading a book.  Books are about my favorite thing in the morning because they help my brain remember what words are, without any response expected from me.

Today, I must have been extra tired.  Instead of reading for 15 or 20 minutes, I ended up reading for about 30 or 40 minutes.  7:15 is on the border of being too late to take a shower because I need to leave the house by 7:30, but I really wanted one, so I thought I might be able to squeeze one in (OK, this whole paragraph is basically a lie.  I wait until 7 or 7:15 almost every day because I read and can't stop reading once I start, but can't NOT read at breakfast, it's like some kind of sickness, then I have to rush around for the next 15 minutes so I can leave my house by 7:30, which never actually happens, so I am late to work pretty much every day.  This is why I am lucky to have a boss in another state).

I know there are some magical people out there (mostly men) who can take a shower and get cleaned up and clothed in 5 minutes flat.

But.

I have Hair. That. Touches. My. Ass.  And since I can't STAND going without washing my hair, I wash it pretty much every day.  So.  My showers take a while.  10 minutes at minimum (plus 5-10 to get most of the tangles out of my luxurious tresses and loop them up into a bun on the back of my head).  I don't even wear makeup or use a hair dryer, but that't 20 minutes already.

Anyway.  I was in a hurry, so I tried to go fast.

Being a bit slow in the brain, though, I didn't catch on that something was wrong.

I kept needing to turn up the hot water, to the point that I had it going full blast with no cold.  And what did I think?  I thought, "Huh... Mom must have taken a REALLY long hot shower this morning."

Never mind that that was over an hour before and the hot water heater should have warmed up again by now.

But even with the hot going full blast, the water was still getting tepid.  Since my hair was rinsed, and even though I hadn't finished shaving my legs, I decided it was time to get out.  Impossible to shave when you have goose bumps, anyway.  Or at least, really stupid.

As  soon as I turned the water off, I heard it.

Running water.

Weirdly, my first thought was that for some reason my boyfriend had gone outside and turned on the sprinkler.  Of course.  Because he makes a habbit of getting up at the butt crack of dawn to sprinkle the lawn?  I opened the window and looked outside.  Nope.  Pretty duh.

I wrapped my towel around me and checked my bedroom.  Boyfriend was still asleep.  Jazz the cat meowed from his position on Boyfriend's head.  Everything was normal.

The water being on outside wouldn't explain why the hot water was gone, anyway.

My dad was out of town, Mom at work, Boyfriend sleeping, cats don't have opposable thumbs, so they couldn't be using the water...

HOLY CRAP!  THERE WAS SOMEONE IN THE HOUSE!  DOING... UH...THE... UH... DISHES?

I dressed quickly and pulled my hair into a towel turban to see if I could track down the running water noise.

No one in the kitchen.  I could hear it in there, but the sink wasn't on.  It was louder in the bathroom.  All three cats started following me.

Maybe Dad drove through the night and was downstairs taking a shower?  I mean, it's possible, right?

I almost fell down the stairs as I started down, and had to sit.  My bare foot had slipped on the third step down, and while I didn't actually land on my butt, I pulled the banister off the support, and had to push it back into place.  It kinda hurt my shoulder, and I had to decide if I was hurt.  I couldn't tell.

I stood up. "Dad?" I said, and then I felt stupid.  Why would he be home?  And he would know not to take a shower when I was already in the upstairs one...  

What if it was some kind of crazy murderer taking a shower to clean off the blood?

HOLY CRAP!  HE WAS TOTALLY GOING TO KILL ME WHEN HE SAW ME!!!

I crept down the stairs into the creepy haunted basement.  It's a mostly finished basement, but it's still haunted.

The bathroom door was open, lights off.

What the hell?

I walked over, my foot squishing slightly on the carpet.  The basement hallway was dark, and I hoped like hell that the carpet was wet with water and not blood.  It was cold, anyway.  I hoped it wasn't sewerage on my bare feet.

I flipped on the bathroom light.

Bonnie the dog was sitting next to the shower on the floor mat, crouched and scared.

I followed her gaze, but I could already hear that I'd found the source of the running water.

Yep.

Hot water heater looked like the Bellagio fountain.

Awesome.

I stared blankly and realized I had no idea whatsoever how to turn the water off.  Bonnie Dog whimpered.


So yeah.  Lots of running around, waking Boyfriend, calling dad to figure out how to shut of the water in the house because the one on the heater was rusted shut, pulling up carpet, breaking eardrums with the shop vac, moving things, lifting water, going to the store to buy a fan, remembering the gas for the hot water heater should be shut off, and being REALLY late for work.

The point is this:

OK, I have two points:

1. Why did I think that my boyfriend would get up at seven in the frickin' morning to water the lawn?
   
2. Why would ANYONE assume that a burglar would do their dishes, especially when the DISHES WERE ALREADY DONE?
   
3. (OK, I have three points) If there were a murderer in the downstairs bathroom cleaning up, why would I walk TOWARDS them?  Am I nothing more than a horror movie extra?
   
4. And yes.  I live with my parents.   Stop judging me.

 

So yeah.

Mornings suck.