I make about 70% of these early Wed swims, which means waking up at 530 and getting out of the house by 545 at the latest.
This is a story about yesterday morning, written in the present tense.
Sleep interrupted by the cries of my baby boy. Logan wakes, it is early, what time? 330, My watch says. Bri gets to him before I can put on my shoes to hobble to his room (to help keep my injured foot balanced), so I wander into the bathroom and then flop back in to bed. Here is proof.
Where I sleep when getting up early so Bri can get more sleep
What seems like a few minutes later, my alarm shrieks its dire warning for the 530 Masters swim. I waffle a bit, groaning in pain and fatigue. Here is proof.
Thus, I wake.
Ignore the sunlight in the background. This is the actual alarm.
I cannot bring myself to launch out of bed and face a hard workout and the rest of the day, so reset the alarm to 630 and fall back into a deep cyborg like slumber. There are no dreams. There is darkness.
The alarm goes off. It reads 630. I have no choice but to rise and get going. People depend on me to torture them with swim intervals. I wander downstairs. I feel awful. I am exhausted. My eyes bleed.
I must continue.
Something is amiss. As I prepare the coffee, I notice that the times on the microwave and oven are wrong. They read 335. Was there a power outage?
Pretend these read 335 instead of 1140, I am not resetting the times for you
I. Am. Confused.
That is not sunlight in the background.
My mind spins. Was there a nuclear blast? Are aliens messing with me, yet again? Has all time melted away to meaningless bits and bytes? What is happening to me?
I turn on the phone. I cannot post a picture of the phone for it is the lens through which I share these views. I could take a picture in a mirror, but that is a poor reflection of the phone's reality. Believe me when I say, the phone lit up, and then also spake, It is 335.
I am released. It is not 630. No. It is 330. For there are two times upon my watch. There is Time One, and there is Time Two. Time One is real time. It is you and I time. It is get up at 515 for coaching every morning time.
Time Two is Other. It is three hours ahead. It tells the future. We always need to know when it is four-twenty in Ittoqqortoormiit, Greenland. This is crucial to the future of mankind, for some reason my watch has not yet shared with me.
The watch. I return it to T1 alarming.
I am relieved. The good Inuit people of Greenland are safe. I can sleep two more hours, and wake up feeling refreshed for the swim. Everything is in its right place. I shall go back to sleep. A deep, restful sleep filled with happy dreams.
Yes?
Answering your silly emails at 345AM
Fini.