so many excuses... so little time...

so today . . . i got up extra early. so of course i was late.

i have decided that if i want to be on time, i need to get a late start. if i get up early, i seem to have this feeling that i have plenty of time. so i don't move very fast. and i don't watch the clock. and then, before i know it, i am late. again.

whereas if i get up late, i know i have to hurry! i zip around with one eye on the clock. every minute has to be productive. there is no time to stand in front of my closet and decide what to wear--i just have to grab something and throw it on. there is no time to make a lunch--i just have to grab a hot pocket out of the freezer and go. there is no time to straighten my hair or put cream cheese on my breakfast bagel or apply mascara or have a conversation. if i get up late, it is all about getting out the door as quickly as possible.

these are inevitably the mornings when conversations happen. these are the mornings where i can't tell if the tights i pulled out of the drawer are black or blue--and inevitably discover that even though they looked black, they were navy blue. which would have been fine, if i wasn't wearing black skirt... these are always the mornings where i can't find my car keys--my one and only set of car keys. these are the mornings that the traffic is bad, and i miss both of the lights on my one mile drive to school.

these are also the mornings when i go off and leave the homework folders at home--the homework folders that have to go home TODAY!

THIS is why we have to buy a house that is close to our current neighborhood. because i fear that if we move more than a couple of miles away, i will get fired for chronic lateness. plus, i need to be able to drive home, retrieve whatever it is that i have forgotten (homework folders, lunch, cell phone, reading books,) and get back to work before my 15 minute break is over...

i'm spoiled. i know i am. there are thousands of people in l.a. who drive clear across town to their jobs. in traffic. during "rush" hour. and i just have to drive a mile. i have had jobs before where it took me half an hour to get to work, and oddly, i was rarely late. but now... now that i can practically see the school from my house, i am a few minutes late almost every morning.

i try to blame the traffic, and sometimes it isn't a ridiculous as it sounds. sometimes i miss the light, because there are a couple of cars ahead of me and one of them wants to turn left. sometimes i can't get out of our neighborhood because of all the cars turning into our neighborhood to avoid the traffic light. sometimes there is a pedestrian... slowly walking across the intersection where i need to turn. and sometimes, sometimes the school crossing guard gives me attitude and makes me wait. and wait. and wait.

and that is just the first crossing guard. two intersections = two crossing guards.

sometimes i think maybe i will be able to blame a parent. that is always a good excuse. because if a parent of one of my students happens to drive into the parking lot at the same time as i do, then i feel it is only polite to wait for them, and talk to them. you know, connect!

this rarely happens.

sometimes, if i am only a minute or two late, i try to blame it on ms. martha. ms. martha is the keeper of the door buzzer in the morning. this is not as easy as it sounds, because for some strange reason, the little thing she has to push to unlock the door when it buzzes, only works when she stands in certain places and puts the thing up against her chin before she presses it. and sometimes, even when she does everything perfectly, it still doesn't open right away. so yes, some days my tardiness can be attributed to faulty door buzzer operations...

this happens a lot. the problem with this is that i am rarely just a minute or two late.

i see no solution here. as i said, i've tried getting up earlier, but i just do more things and so i'm still late. i've tried setting my clocks ahead--and you know what a ruckus that caused. i've tried tricking myself into thinking i have to be at school 15 minutes earlier. but then i just get confused and end up forgetting what time i am really supposed to be there.

maybe they should just change the time i am supposed to be at school to 15 minutes later.

and not tell me...

do i LOOK like the white rabbit...

so today . . . i was on time for work. again. it is starting to freak me out just a little bit...

i have to punch a time clock at work. real teachers are on salary and don't have to punch a time clock. but i teach in a private school, and the rules are different here. we punch a time clock.

i understand the reasons why this is a necessary evil--the truth is, if there were no time clock, some people would take advantage and always be either arriving late or leaving early. i admit, i would probably be one of the former. there must be something in the nether-reaches of my family tree that predisposes me to lateness (at least that is my story!) i am not one of those people who are so late that everything has to wait for me. oh no, i am always just slightly late--you know, five minutes, seven minutes, never more than 10 minutes, but still late.

i usually don't plan to be late--i plan to be on time. and yet it never happens. as i have talked to other chronically slightly late people, two things emerge... we are all oddly married to people who think being on time means arriving 15 minutes early, and we are almost always late for the same reason--on our way 'out the door' we stop to do 'just one more thing.' but we do that several times before actually making it out the door.

i would love to blame my lateness on rollie. i think i can make a pretty good case for that. i don't like to be the first to arrive at an event--too much pressure for socialization--and his time frame always makes us the first to arrive. so when he says to me, "are you ready to go?" at the time we have agreed to leave, my response is always, "yes, as soon as i get my shoes on." or "yes, just let me grab my (fill in the blank.)"

one day, after hearing that response from me for the gazillionth time, he said, "why do you always say yes you are ready to go when you aren't?" i just looked at him blankly. "i don't," i said. "why do you think that?" "because," he said, "you say you are ready. i get my keys out. i walk to the door, ready to leave, but you are nowhere to be found. and when i ask where you are, you are always doing something. you are nowhere near the door!"

i guess we have a difference of opinion about what being 'ready to go' means. to me, it means i need to put my shoes on (which means a trip upstairs,) turn off whatever electronics i am using, find a jacket or sweater (which means another trip upstairs, since i didn't think of it the first time,) retrieve my phone from wherever i laid it down (which isn't easy, since it could be ANYWHERE! and don't say call it, because i usually have the ringer muted,) check to make sure i haven't left anything out that the dogs might enjoy chewing up, decide if i should use the bathroom before leaving, look for my chapstick, and finally grab my purse.

to rollie it means walking out the door.

you can see we have a problem. and it is compounded by the fact that rollie has finally made an attempt at compromise by generally agreeing that being 'on time' means arriving at the stated start time for any event. this means we have no margin for error. or phone retrieval.

my response is to send him to the car.

now when he says, "are you ready to go?" i still say yes, but then i add, "go to the car. i'll be right behind you." he fell for this the first time. he even went for it the second and third times. the next few times, i think he had his doubts, but he still went along with it. finally he came to the conclusion that it was a lie--i was not going to be right behind him--i was going to be at least another two or three minutes... maybe five.

BUT i can't really blame rollie's need to be early for my lateness, because i tend to be a little bit late even when i am not going anywhere with him. and this is most evident every weekday when i head to school...

in my defense, the time clock and i have been at odds for quite some time. the last couple of years it has been five minutes fast. we have whined and complained to the powers that be, but they are convinced that the clock is set by some atomic device and cannot be wrong. i am of the opinion that all of our cell phones (which, btw, all show the same time) cannot be wrong. and yet, i am not the one in charge here. so every morning i rush around, think i am leaving on time, only to find that when i punch the time clock, i am late.

this causes me much stress. i've tried setting my alarm earlier. i've tried tricking myself into thinking all our clocks are slow. i've even occasionally left the house with a naked face! and yet, every time i stick my time card into the hated time clock, i find i am late.

this year, at our first staff meeting, we were informed that the time clock had somehow gained three more minutes. so we were going to be given a few minutes of grace to compensate. this was a nice idea, but i still felt late--only now i felt really late!

and then, a few days ago after my usual mad dash to school, praying my way through mostly green and yellow lights, i punched the time clock only to see that i was...NOT LATE!! the time stamp actually said 8:01 instead of 8:08 or 8:10! i was stunned. it had to be a mistake. i must have left earlier than i had thought. but on the third day of not being late, i finally asked someone about it and learned that somehow, miraculously the time clock had been reset.

HAAAA-LE-LU-IA!!!!!

i like not being late anymore. although i'm not quite used to it yet. i still look at the clock in the kitchen as i am grabbing my breakfast and think, "i'm late! i'm late!!" and then i go rushing out the door...

which is probably a good thing. because as you may have noticed, i am still not exactly what you could call early...

one of these days, evil julie is going to win . . .

so today . . . my driveway was blocked by an ambulance. my driveway. out of all the driveways AND empty spaces on the street, my driveway was blocked. totally. by an ambulance.

my sunday mornings are hectic. sunday is a busy day around here--it starts early and moves like a locomotive for several hours. and i am always tired, because i always stay up late on saturday night, because it is the last night of my weekend. so when my alarm goes off at 7:30 (which is REALLY 7:30 on sunday morning, because i use the alarm on my phone--NOT the one on my clock, which as you know is set at least 13 minutes fast,) i do not leap out of bed. actually, i don't think i have ever lept out of bed in the morning . . . although rollie tries to trick me into it once in a while by telling me the time it says on my clock, which again, is at least 13 minutes fast! and depending on how deeply asleep i am, i might or might not fall for his evil trick. you see, if rollie is the one telling me the time, one part of my brain says it has to be the right time, because he would never play my time game--just like he would never say the word "mcmuffin" or "cini-minis" when ordering breakfast. but there is another part of my brain that knows he is trying to help me get up, so maybe he would tell me the incorrect time just to jolt me awake and get my adrenaline moving.

but i digress.

so, at almost the last possible minute that i could leave the house and get to church for band rehearsal on time, i set the alarm, throw milk bones at the dogs, dash into the garage and hit the garage door button . . . only to see my driveway blocked by an ambulance. totally blocked.

i look around and see no one. i do see a fire engine parked on the other side of our neighbor's house. this leads me to believe that perhaps that is where they are. but there is no sign of a fireman or ambulance person anywhere.

now i am not completely insensitive to the fact that one of my neighbors is in distress and apparently needs help. i am just perplexed as to why the ambulance chose to park at the end of MY driveway. they didn't park in front of my neighbor's house--and there was a perfectly good spot there. they didn't park in front of my neighbor's driveway--which would have put them as close as possible to their front door. and they didn't park in any one of the other empty spaces on the street. they parked at the end of my driveway.

there wasn't a lot i could do. i was going to be late, and it isn't good for me to be late when i am trying to teach teenaged boys that it is disrespectful to make other people wait on you. so i whipped out my cellphone and texted james (who was already at church, i am sure, setting up sound equipment,) "there is an ambulance blocking my driveway. completely. so i am kind of stuck here until they come." he immediately replied, "what? are you ok?"

yes, i am ok. we are fine. we rarely have medical emergencies, but i fear that our recent bout with hospitalization has led some of you to think of us as fragile. but we're not--we are actually healthier than a lot of people we know. (i know that is hard for some of you to believe, especially considering my copious consumption of brownies . . .) just because we mention hospitals or ambulances, it probably isn't because we are the sick ones. so don't worry!

but i digress again.

so i am standing in my driveway wondering what to do. should i go back inside and wait for them to leave? no, i can't see them from inside my house. and since they came without sirens, they will probably leave without them. should i pull out into the driveway and wait for them to come? no, who knows how long they will be! and then i realize that the engine is running in the ambulance . . . which means that the keys are in the ignition . . . and there is a perfectly good empty spot in front of the neighbor's house just a car length away . . . and a plan begins to take shape in evil julie's mind--no wait, not evil julie--good julie, who doesn't want to be late!

i look around. no one is outside. the neighborhood is deserted, which is unusual because usually the neighbors all come out to see who is being hauled away by ambulance. i mentally move a little closer to the ambulance. of course, all the while i am picturing my evil plan, a voice in my head is screaming, "ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!?!?!" but the clock is ticking . . . i text james and say,"the engine is running in the ambulance," and he says, "drive it here (to church.)"

ok, james is the one i am calling to bail me out of jail!

and then the firemen come out of the house next door. they glance my way, get on their truck and try to leave the neighborhood. i say try, because it took them a long time to find their way out. i would insert an evil laugh here, but i hold no grudge against the firemen--they are not the ones blocking my driveway! but they did sort of look at me like, "stop gawking and go back inside." and then i am kind of insulted and annoyed, so yes! let's just insert an evil laugh here--bwahahahaha!! there! just try and find your way out of this neighborhood!

but the moment has passed. it would now be too risky to even contemplate moving the ambulance myself, but i think the ambulance guys will probably be coming out soon anyway. and they do. with an empty guerney. i guess this is good news for my neighbor. but then the ambulance people give me the same look as the firefighters! now i am really annoyed, because after all, they are the ones parked illegally! they are the ones wasting gas and putting unnecessary pollutants into the air! they are the ones making me late! and i am not gawking! i just want to get out of my driveway!!!!

the rational part of my brain knows that i will never see these people again. but the irrational side does not want them to think that i am the kind of person who would come outside my house and wait to see what was going on! the rational part of my brain knows that they don't care what i am doing standing in my driveway at 9:00 on a sunday morning. but the irrational side is imagining the conversation they will be having about people who have nothing better to do on a sunday morning than chase ambulances. the rational part of my brain says i should just stay out of their way. but the irrational side wins again, and so i jump in my car and back out into my driveway before they can leave--just so they know i was waiting for them to move, and not to see what was going on.

they go one direction down our street and i go the other. shoot! i think to myself. i should have gone the same way they were going so they would see i needed to leave. but it is too late. as i sit at the exit to our housing development waiting to turn right, guess who pulls up beside me? yup! the fire engine, followed by the ambulance. i don't know what route they took, but it was not the shortest one. and yet i am pleased, because not only did i beat them to the exit, we all had to sit and wait for traffic. so now they know i had someplace to go. i am not an ambulance chaser or disaster gawker.

i'm just late . . .

i'm late, i'm late . . .

so today . . . my alarm did not go off.

this was a problem, because i go to church on sunday. not only that, but i have to rehearse the band before church, so i need to be there by 9:00. this morning when i turned over and blearily opened my eyes to squint at my clock, it said 8:39! did you see that i am supposed to be at church by 9:00?!?!?!

the good news is that it wasn't really 8:39--it was really 8:19. my clock is always set to the wrong time. on purpose. i am not a morning person. i am one of those people who hits my snooze alarm 4 or 5 times before i am actually able to drag myself into an upright position. i have found that if my clock is set ahead a few minutes, it helps me to be on time. but it has to be set ahead by a prime number of minutes--usually i choose 13. this is because my brain knows that my clock is set ahead, but in the blurriness of my mornings, it cannot calculate the actual time if it is set ahead 7 or 13 or 19 minutes. and that is ok, because i'm trying to fool myself into getting up earlier since i think it is later than it really is. even though i know it really isn't. are you following me here?

this drives my poor husband crazy! it is compounded by the fact that my clock projects it's time onto the ceiling. once i go to sleep, i am pretty much out for the night. he is not. and when he wakes up he sees the time on the ceiling. of course, he knows it is not the real time, but he is never quite sure how far ahead it is. plus, my clock tends to pick up a minute here and a minute there, so usually even i am not sure of the exact discrepancy. so he lays there, doing the math in his head (why is it harder to subtract prime numbers?) which engages his mind, and then he has a harder time going back to sleep. i have suggested he just turn over and look at his own clock, which has the exact right time on it. but he says he can't ignore the gigantic blue numbers from my clock, announcing to anyone who cares to look, the wrong time . . .

he has, however, finally resigned himself to the fact that i have to smack the snooze alarm several times before i get up. he doesn't understand it at all, but he has accepted that the alarm has to go off repeatedly before i can wake up. usually this is not a problem for him, because he is up and out the door before my eyes even begin struggling to focus . . .

i married a morning person. he is always up and finished exercising (yes, he gets up and lifts weights in the morning--at least he SAYS that is what he does. i am always asleep, so who knows if he really does that . . . although he is in pretty good shape, and he doesn't lie, so it is probably true . . . ) and out of the shower and dressed, before i actually stumble out of bed. this is probably one of the reasons we have been married so long--our paths do not cross in the morning until i have showered and dressed and am headed out the door.

but this morning, none of that helped me. and actually, my alarm did go off. it's just that it was the alarm on my phone, and last night i had turned the volume off. i turned the volume off, because rollie was already asleep, and when i plug my phone in it makes a beep beep sound. so my plan was to turn it off, plug it in, and then turn it back on. it was a good plan, but clearly lacking in execution. so it tried to wake me up, but it couldn't make any noise. when i saw the time "8:39" on my clock, i leaped out of bed and raced toward the bathroom and soap and water.

while i was washing my face, i was wondering why diandra hadn't come in to see why i wasn't up. we had discussed riding together this morning. surely she had been aware of the silence from my room--no hair dryer, no music blasting from the ipod, no "good morning" from her mom. and then i noticed she looked like she was just getting up too. diandra also has to be at the church by 9:00. her alarm did not go off either. it was also set on her phone, but it had failed for a different reason than mine. so there we were . . .

i don't think we have ever gotten ready for church faster than we did this morning! i was out the door before my brain was even really in gear. i didn't even look at myself in the mirror before i left the house.

we were late, but only by a few minutes. i started band rehearsal. and can i just say right here that my blog yesterday was proven over and over and over again this morning during rehearsal. i cannot tell you how often those boys said something totally unrelated to what we were doing. and it made me laugh, because it just proved the truth of what i had written yesterday. but i was the only one who could enjoy it, because no one else had read my blog yet. and i kept laughing, and the boys kept saying, "what? what?" it was hysterical . . .

what was not so hysterical was what happened later. we are celebrating our anniversary later this month, so our church decided to acknowlege that today by giving us a gift. this required me to go up and stand on the platform next to rollie for a few minutes to accept it.

nonononononono, my brain said. no. the problem was a--i got up late, b--i had thrown on my skinny jeans and a top and had no idea what i looked like, c--my hair was in a ponytail, and d--i am never in the main service, and this was probably not the best way for people to realize that the person married to their pastor had come to church looking like a teenager today!!! it was not my finest hour.

but thankfully, time does move on--even if you are not really sure what time it is . . .