Personal revelation

This morning, while scraping the ever-loving snot out of my car windshield, I had an epiphany:

I am my father's daughter.

That may not sound like much to you (unless you had paternity issues when you were younger), but this really made me take pause.

What caused this moment of personal clarity, you ask? Fabulous query. Allow me to answer with an anecdote, followed by some examples.

This particular morning, I had to be at work at 7:30am to help set up for a conference. Knowing this, I woke up at 6am, thinking this would be enough time for me to have my coffee and get dressed. (Isn't it cute how I still don't understand this particular part about myself?)

Now, I was completely dressed and caffeinated by 7am. I was ahead of schedule, for crying out loud. So, rather than go outside and warm up my car to ensure prompt departure, I decided it was the perfect time to write and address two cards, naturally.

...but first, I couldn't find my address book, so I had to locate that. Then, I couldn't remember what I'd done with the stamps, so I had to retrace my steps to pinpoint their exact location. Last of all, I remembered I had cute return address labels, so I had to rifle through my room to figure out what I'd done with them. Finally, the cards were ready to go, so I put them outside for the mailman. And hey, by that time, it was 7:15am!

Given that it takes me about 10 minutes to warm up my car and scrape off all the ice, and about 10-15 minutes to get to work depending on traffic (and how many cop cars I see), leaving right at 7:15am would have been just fine. Unfortunately, I didn't start the defrosting process until 7:16am, which means I didn't leave the house until 7:24am, and then did not get to work until 7:37am.

This could have been so easily avoided had I merely tried to be early, rather than on time. I do this almost every day and yet I learn nothing from it. What's that called? There's a word for that... oh yeah! Stupid.

It hit me whilst scraping ice as fast as humanly possible that this is almost exactly the kind of thing my dad does. He'll have to go somewhere, perhaps meeting someone for dinner, and will remember as he starts walking out the door that he needs to a) get his hat b) grab a bill to take to the post office c) take his pills d) write down a word in Chinese or e) all of the above.

It always amused me before, but now that I'm seeing the parallels in our behavior, it's a little scary. I used to be pretty punctual and now, I'm not terribly late, but it's usually about 5 minutes past the designated time.

I figured out part of the reason for my tardiness. I've decided that the time of departure and the time of arrival are pretty much interchangeable. I'm not sure when that happened or why, because I also don't like to rush things. I'd rather have an easy morning where I get to wake up, drink my coffee and read the paper for about ten minutes, take a shower, have plenty of time to choose what I wear, have a second cup of coffee and then leave with plenty of time to get to work.

I also don't think this problem could be fixed if I woke up earlier. As it is, my alarm is set for 6:30am. I snooze (5 min.) at least twice on a good day. It goes downhill from there. If I set my alarm to go off fifteen minutes earlier, I will remember this when I wake up and just hit snooze three more times than I normally would. PLUS, if I did manage to get up fifteen minutes earlier, I would manage to fill that time with more crap. I'm sure I'd suddenly decide to start a compost pile or go through my clothes to figure out what doesn't fit anymore.

The point of all of this is that it's always something. When I'm late, despite the fact that it is my fault, there's still a reason (usually someone that insists on going the exact speed limit and no more). To add to that, I've got the "late gene" passed down from my father. And hey, you really can't beat science.

"Sorry I'm late, but I left late."

(-I do not remember where I heard this, but I thought it was fantastic. If anyone knows, drop me a line so I can give proper credit where credit is due.)