Does anybody read these?

Midnight oil

I have always been a night owl. When I was growing up, my dad had to be at work at 5 a.m., so that meant he left the house at 4:30. In the summer months, I would sit up on the couch and watch TV until almost time for him to wake up. Sometimes I would pretend I was asleep while he got ready for work so I didn't get in trouble for staying up so late.

In high school, I would get home from my part-time job at 10 p.m., do my hours of homework and then be on the bus by 7:15 the next morning.

In college, I would go out to the bars (usually O'Hooley's, the Junction or the Pub. Or all three) after Student Senate meetings, stay out until last call, grab something from the Burrito Buggy and drop people off at dorms and houses all the way down to old Building 38. Then, I'd be on the copy desk by 7:30 a.m. to edit the paper the next day (or later that day, really...).

Even in my adult life, there have been times that I've barely made it home in time for work. But, I get to work and my job doesn't suffer. I do, however, find that as I get older these days are fewer and farther between. I definitely couldn't run every Friday on three hours of sleep like I did in college. I also couldn't go three days without sleep like I did when we were finishing our final projects for Campaigns and Elections and Civil Liberties classes.

Yet, I still have my late nights. And I like to think I'm not as old as I feel. I surprise myself sometimes. Last night, for example, I worked until 10:30 but had to make a layer cake for my roommate, who goes to work at 6 a.m., to take with her this morning. So, I was up until 1:30 and got back up at 5:30 to put the final touches on it. And I feel fine, although I did practically make out with the boy who gave me my latte at Starbucks this morning.

So, even though I tend to be a night owl, especially when I don't have anywhere to be the next morning, you would think I could put up with someone else doing it. And, for the most part, I can.

But it's starting to get really old doing my dishes before bed every night and waking up with a sinkful the next morning. I like to go to bed with a clean house because it gives me a feeling of accomplishment. And frankly, I am getting too old to wash dishes that magically appeared overnight while I wait for my car to warm up.

Our other roommate is sweet, but she's a musician who does the whole restaurant gig when she doesn't have music gigs. She keeps odd hours, even by my standards. Because even if I'm up at 1 a.m., I am watching TV or reading, not dirtying every dish in the house to make what appeared to be a multi-course meal. And when I lived in other people's houses, I wouldn't dare be up in the kitchen all hours of the day, because I would have felt horrible if I'd woken them up. Plus, we've already determined that I like to have a clean kitchen when I go to bed. (And my mom -- and the roommates of my youth -- will tell you it's taken me a long time to get to that point in my life.)

Often here in town, you see ads for housing by musicians looking for other musicians. Or people saying "I'm not really looking for a musician for a roommate..." I'm not saying that I don't like having a musician for a roommate, but I am saying I can why those advertisements exist now. I would guess that other musicians might have similarly suited schedules. They are probably more acclimated to late-night jam sessions and just general overnight rambling than your average flack and graduate student. Although I do believe I have been pretty forthcoming with the fact that we're both getting older, have to get up early and are well past our late-night partying days.

How late is late? Have I become an old fuddy-duddy? Perhaps this is true. But sometimes you have to be a fuddy-duddy when you are working two jobs to pay the mortgage, a car note, an assload of student loads. You know, all that real life stuff...

Funny thing. I wasn't devastated when my little musician pal with this late-night texts stopped texting. Girl needs to sleep, and even though he's hardly starving, I still felt like a) he should sleep and b) he should do a little more with his time. Don't get me wrong, it'd rock if someone would give me $2 million bucks for 90 minutes of my time, but they won't, so it's best if people don't text me at 4 a.m., you know?

And while he woke me up with his texts, at least he didn't steal my cheese out of the fridge while I was at work.

And sometimes he told me cool stuff that other people didn't know yet. That was neat. But still, I never felt like he understood "real life" and how the common folk lived. I chalked it up to him being in his own, little, super-rich-people world, but now I am beginning to think that all musicians, regardless of level of success, live in that same place.

posted by Laura at 8:39 AM