Much to my dismay, it appears these confessions are becoming a continuing series. Last time I forgot to brush my teeth. This time I woke up 30 minutes before I had to be at work. THIRTY MINUTES, PEOPLE.

It went down something like this. I got up at 6:00 to feed the cats and then went back to bed. I always go back to bed after feeding the cats, even though our alarm goes off at 6:15 and it would make much more sense to just stay up. (Or make the cats wait until 6:15 to be fed but believe me, that is NOT an option.) This morning after feeding the cats I snuggled back into bed for my last snippet of precious, precious sleep. I woke up, seemingly minutes later, to Rob mumbling, “We gotta get up.” He always says this half-asleep, without even checking the clock, so I didn’t take him too seriously, especially since the alarm clock hadn’t gone off yet. Still, I rolled over to see what time it was so I could argue that no, we really could stay in bed at least another 10 minutes.

And the clock said 7:30. SEVEN-THIRTY. And I have to be at work at 8:00. EIGHT O’CLOCK.

“SHIT! It’s 7:30?!” I yelled at Rob, incredulous and panicked. Rob gave me that stoned expression – the look of someone who’s totally high and has no comprehension of what you’re trying to say or why you are getting so uptight about it. (When Rob is stoned on sleep, he is the complete opposite of his awake self. It’s as if his brain works so hard during the day being so incredibly, enviously intelligent that when it finally gets a break, it just packs up and heads to Hawaii.) “We have to be at work in HALF AN HOUR,” I explained. I saw the realization sink in, slowly at first, and then suddenly his eyes widened and without another word to each other, we were OFF.

I think I broke my own morning-routine record. I think that if morning routines were an Olympic event, I would have broken that record too. Get this – I woke up at 7:30 and I walked into work at 8:00. No, I STRUTTED into work at 8:00 because I was so damn proud of my record-breaking performance. And people even told my non-showered self, "You look nice today." (Mini-lesson learned: Used together, a ponytail and a little extra perfume are a completely acceptable substitute to a morning shower.)

Lesson learned: Do not let husband’s geek-genius quality fool you – he may be able to explain the international dateline, but the AM/PM distinction one must navigate when setting the alarm clock is beyond him.