Morning Becomes...Someone (who probably isn't me)

So I have decided to become a morning person.

By which I mean that I set my iPod's alarm to 6:25am. At 6:26 am, the thing beeps like it is about to detonate a nuclear device in my bed and then begins to play my selected playlist. Usually this happens, and I am usually awakened by Drew Sarich's album "Say It", which means I lay around and enjoy the music for a good twenty minutes, and eventually get up, convinced the day will be productive and full of sunshine. Usually, it decides to remind me who is the more intelligent life form and plays the Dropkick Murphys or My Chemical Romance and I leap out of bed convinced that the Day of Rapture is at hand and I am about to be caught without any makeup.

Anyway, my morning actually started about 1:45am as I was finishing up some research for a friend of mine on Bulgarian vampires, when an enormous black moth somehow made its way into my room and began battering itself against my light. I hate moths. The fluttery little white ones freak me out enough; but after a chance encounter with a charming little old eastern-European man at the British Library, who explained that while the white ones are the spirits of the dead looking to go home, the black ones are vampires scouting for victims, my reaction might have risen to a level somewhat resembling hysterical. And the bigger the moth, I could only assume, the more powerful the vampire. And this thing is big enough to require a flight plan in most countries and is making my light sway back and forth every time it smashed itself against it (apparently, one can forgo the classy need for invitation when one has disguised one's vampiric nature in insect form. Bastard.). So I do what any rational human being would do under such circumstances. I turn off the light and cower in the hallway until the Prince of Darkness decides to flutter to the light on the landing. He proceeded to get caught up in the sheets hanging from the drying rack on the ceiling and the light made 14 different shadow-vampires, all enormous and all franticly trying to claim me for its own. Too terrified to actually stand up and run into my room, I just kind of roll across the floor and through the doorway, kicking the door shut as I go. At which the moth, clearly incensed with the loss of his prey, begins battering against the closed door for a good twenty minutes before going off in search of fresh blood.

Perhaps out of consideration for the above ordeal, iPod and I apparently reached a happy compromise and I was dragged into the world of the living four hours later with the soundtrack to 'Hair'. I had my first meeting with my dissertation supervisor and wanted to be a) early b) sentient and c) clean, so I bustled about getting ready and leaping into a passing bus, which somehow rejected the laws of physics and got me to campus 45 minutes before my scheduled meeting. Not very enthused with the prospect of hanging out with the repairmen who were staring with professional disinterest at the revolving door at the main entrance, I decided to go to the library and pay off my mounting debts.

Not surprisingly, I was one of the only people in the building, as it had opened 15 minutes earlier and it is after term time. The kid behind the counter was reading a paperback thriller and looked up as I approached...and was the spitting image of Jesus.

"Hi," I said, trying to not look as perturbed as I felt. "I have fines."

"Oh, don't we all," he chuckled kindly.

Well, you don't, I though tersely. Unless dying for the sins of man don't get you out of a few overdue fees these days...

Jesus kindly takes my money, makes correct change and smiles benevolently upon me as I scoot out of the library and head back to school, where the repair men are still entranced by revolving door. Up to the eighth floor (who says History isn't a physical activity?), where a tall, thin man without socks and with hair blossoming in a curly frenzy from every direction around his head holds the door to the department open for me and leaves.

Then I realize, by dint of the fact that I am now the only person on this floor, that my supervisor just walked out. Fortunately, he returned five minutes later with tea. I introduced myself.

"Why do I know that name? Is there another Bridget Keown somewhere?"

After a brief bit of Dostoevskian panic, I decide it's just a Thing and move on.

He's Irish, he knows where Smith College is, and he liked my bracelet. And I managed to discuss my dissertation without blubbering. In fact, I actually impressed myself by being able to state that "I want to see if Irish soldiers with shell-shock were really treated differently from British soldiers and why" without sounding like some kind of post-modernist groupie. In fact, I think I sounded rather like an Historian. And that was pretty exciting.

I hit the street again (the repair men were gone and there was now a sign proclaiming that the revolving door was 'out of order') and promptly had a panic attack, realizing I had agreed to turn in my first draft in 5 weeks and was currently unsure if there existed enough material to write a half-decent end-of-term essay, let alone a 60-page Monster.

So I did what any rational, grown-up would do. I bought myself a chocolate croissant and a coffee thing that had more sugar than my eighth birthday party.

As I went to the bus stop to head to the British Library, a drunk man on the curb bellowed, "It's noon, who wants to buy me a sandwich?!"

...All in all, an eventful morning...

And for putting up with that little tale, here's a song for your next morning.