The Snooze Bandit Strikes Again

I am one of THOSE people. You know the ones. The people who set their alarms to go off almost a full hour before they have to actually get up. The people who hit the snooze button over and over and over again. That's me. It's a problem, I know. But admitting that I have a problem is the first step, right?

If you have ever lived (or spent the night) with one of these people, you know how annoying this can be. I have had roommates come from the opposite side of an apartment to tell me that my alarm was going off. I don't hear it. Why? Because I don't want to. My bed, as uncomfortable as my mattress can be, is my refuge from the world - my warm, cozy safe haven from all the worries of the day. And Smelly the Beast Dog loves it too. In fact she contributes to my daily reluctance to get up because as soon as she hears the alarm, she moves closer to me and snuggles close.

When I was a kid, my mom would call upstairs on the intercom to wake my brother and me up in the morning. Each of us would dangle a leg out of the bed and pound our heel on the floor to indicate that we were "up and at 'em," but that was rarely the case. I'm surprised I didn't get in more trouble because I was ALWAYS late to school.

I'm a night person, you see, and mornings are my mortal enemy. I love to sleep and always have, but since I went off to college 14 (yikes!) years ago, I've been running at a deficit. Because I am a night owl, I have a hard time getting to bed before midnight or 1 AM, so when the alarm goes off at 5:45, I'm not a happy camper. Logic would dictate that I should try to get to bed earlier. My internal clock, however, does not run on logic.

I have tried though. All those silly little tricks they say work: going to bed by 10 PM; sleeping with the blinds open so the sun can wake you gradually and naturally in the morning; setting your clock for the actual time that you need to get up; not eating or drinking caffeinated drinks before bed. None of that works for me.

So, to all my former and current roommates and overnight guests, please forgive me and try to understand that I don't push the snooze button to annoy you. I do it because I HAVE to.

Some Call Them Annoying. I Call Them Endearing.

Yes, folks. I'm talking about my personality quirks. Just so you know that Helen Skor is a real, live, flesh-and-blood human being, I thought I would share with you a few of my idiosyncratic behaviors.

1. Laundry - I hate doing laundry, but I hate having dirty clothes even more. If I take something out of the closet to wear and I decide I'm either not in the mood for it or I look like an Orca with it on, off it goes into the laundry basket. Yes, I had it on for 30 seconds, but it has now officially been worn.
2. Ironing - I despise ironing. Not because the actual act of ironing is terrible. But because the whole process of getting out the ironing board and iron, filling the iron, draining the water from the iron, and putting the ironing board away when you're done is a big old pain in the butt. How do I solve this problem? About once a month, I sit down with a big old pile of clean laundry on a Sunday afternoon and iron for about 4 or 5 hours straight.
3. Closet Space - I need a lot of it, and luckily I have plenty in my place. I have two closets in my room. The left closet is neatly arranged from left to right: formal dresses, casual dresses, sweaters that need to hang, skooters, short skirts, capris, dress pants, long skirts. Naturally, these are subdivided by color. My right-hand closet is tops: button-ups for work, going out shirts, casual shirts, camisoles, dressy tanks. Again organized by color. (ROY G. BIV is a close personal friend of mine!).
4. My Underwear Drawers - I have two drawers in my dresser for underwear. The top drawer is for bras, and the next drawer down is for underwear. If you need proof of my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you need look no further than these two drawers. I admit it . . . I fold my underwear. The good stuff goes in the front. The not-so-good stuff goes in the back. And if it's really not good, it goes in the trash, no matter how comfortable it is.

And these are just the weird things I do with my clothes. I think it has to do with the fact that I never really had a lot growing up. My parents weren't rich, but we also were never lacking anything that we needed. I wore my brother's hand-me-downs for years and years, so I always dressed like a boy . . . t-shirts and jeans all the time. But even then, my t-shirts were always ironed with military precision and carefully hung in the closet (but NEVER with wire hangers!).

These days, I am much more girly in my choice of attire. And, finally, I have "expendable income" to waste (I mean "invest") on my wardrobe. And I do a LOT of investing. Just ask Jo! But those old lessons die hard. So, in reality, I'm not OCD . . . just meticulous.

Combative

I have recently been told that I can come across as combative. I know, I know. It's shocking that someone would say that about me. The context in which I was informed of this went a little something like this: "Rick is attracted to you, but he's afraid to ask you out because he said you can be a little combative." So how did I respond to this revelation? I immediately went on MySpace and changed my screen name to "Combative" to be ironic. Well, the irony of that is that it was the single most combative thing I could have done besides calling Rick and telling him to eff off. (Especially since Rick is on my friends list.) So I'm starting to think there might be some truth to it, and it's a hard thing to accept. But acceptance is the first step.

Last night, I was out with Jo, Bergle, and another friend, and we got into a discussion about tipping. It quickly deteriorated from a discussion to a heated debate between Jo and me. (Bergle, wise man that he is, opted to stay out of it!)

I found myself getting really ticked with Jo because she wouldn't admit that she might be wrong about how much the average tipper leaves. She claimed that it was 12 - 14%, and I argued that it was 18%. She was making the point that when she was a server, she usually made about 14%. I was arguing that, when I was serving, I used to pull in about 18 - 20%. This "discussion" went on and on and on with no resolution.

But how could there be? Here I was getting pissed because Jo wouldn't concede that I was right, but at the same time, I wasn't even considering the possibility that maybe SHE was right. Or that we were both right, and it really just depends on where you work. She had worked in places that catered to teenagers and a much more "mature" crowd (read as: OLD FARTS) here in Northern Virginia, while I had worked at places that catered to a 40-something crowd of regulars in a small town (and many of my customers knew my parents). If you've ever worked in the restaurant business, you probably already know that teenagers and people over 65, in general, aren't very good tippers. And people who know your parents are NOT going to stiff you. So really, we were both right.

This begs a question, however. What is REALLY the average amount that people tip on a restaurant meal? For me, the server starts out with a 20% tip. If they do a decent job of keeping my drink full, bringing me the things that I need, and keeping me informed if the kitchen is running behind, the will get 20%. If I have to chase them down for a drink refill or a bottle of ketchup, their tip will go down. If the service is really fantastic, I've been known to leave a 30 or 40% tip. And if the service is so bad that I feel inclined to leave less than 15%, I am probably going to end up talking to the manager before the meal is over . . . but I will still tip. And Jo pretty much has the same attitude about tipping as me.

But what do YOU consider the average tip? Most restaurants charge 18% gratuity on parties of 8 or more . . . is that the standard tipping rate?

And Jo . . . I'm sorry for being so combative. :-)