GRUMPY OLD TOAD

It should come as no surprise to my readers that Savage Kitten and I are dissimilar in some ways.

She is a small Cantonese-American person (well, small in comparison to white people of either gender), whereas I am a normally proportioned white male of mostly Dutch-American ancestry.
[Meaning that I tower over the local Cantonese, but, in that I am of average height (five feet nine inches), I am considerably shorter than some of those horrid beef-fed glandular freaks from the centre of the country.]

She is petite. Me, hardly.

She has tiny hands with slender fingers. I'm normal.

She neither drinks nor smokes, while I cannot claim an excess of abstemia.

She tends to obsess about things which, in the grand scheme of things, are really of only minor importance, tisk tisk.

She likes lobster, I like duck.

She'll eat soup with chopsticks, I will use a fork.


I could go on listing differences, but what I really want to bring to your attention is the huge gap between "morning people" and normal folks.

Morning people are full of beans at a time when normal folks are still in the arms of Morpheus. Morning people clomp about the house, slamming doors, clanging pans and singing (singing!), when normal folks are still (trying to be) blissfully somnambulic. Morning people are giddily chirping away at an hour when normal folks can barely string together two grunty syllables.

Their energy level just after dawn is positively frightening. And they want to share it. Urk.
It is very irritating.


But the most horrible thing is that morning people can do all this without coffee!


Sweep Jeebus what a bunch of freaks.
No wonder they stole the world when no one was watching.
[All of us normal people had not even had our first cup at that time.]

It is a mild consolation that in the evening, when I am still going strong, she is curled up on the bed, a book sliding from her tired grasp, and a stuffed monkey by her side. I can remain in the teevee room, and once she is asleep, light up a pipe, grab a volume that requires attentive reading, and spend the next two or three hours enjoying the stillness of the night (or watching trashy movies with the sound on low). Heaven!
Even if I really wanted to talk, all I could get out of her after nine o’clock would be muffled squeaks and yawns, and she'd look at me out of those drowsy baby-brown eyes with an expression that would plainly say "shut up you stupid white person I've got to sleep!".


Given that circumstance, you'd think that she would understand how valuable slumber is, and how precious a few extra moments of rest actually are. How very much to be savoured during those last sweet minutes in the morning.

Nope.

Apparently the fact that I am not compos mentes until after my first cup of coffee qualifies me for the sobriquet of "grumpy old toad".

Hmmmph!

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We have, however, reached an accommodation of sorts.
That being a reverential silence while I read the funnies.