They all tried to convince me to give them second breakfast, too

Hoo boy I am scatterbrained this evening.  I hope my autopilot is good because I'm going to the airport to pick up JD in a few hours.  I've been to the airport a bunch of times.  Maybe the car knows the way.

This morning started about an hour too early.  All of the animals decided that I had to get up before dawn.  I don't know how they knew it was Monday.  Normally, JD would be here on a weekday morning and he'd get up at 4:30 or some equally horrendous hour, so they would be fed in the dark.  On the weekends, they don't seem to mind me sleeping in until 7:30.  How do they know?  (Perhaps they're listening to the traffic outside?)

Somehow, when I was a kid, my cat Scooper would wake me up at 4:32 every morning to be let out.  On the dot.  A)  Why was she watching the clock like that?  B) HOW was she watching the clock like that?  C) Was it her boyfriend she was meeting? D) Were the neighborhood squirrels on the same schedule?

To wake me up this morning was a three part effort.  Andy delved under the bedroom door, grabbing the alarm clock's cord.  The movement of the cord and the alarm clock annoys me intensely, as the clock is right next to my head.  Olli, Dori, and Nazca paced the hallway, howled, and stood up with their feet on the bedroom door.  Inside the bedroom, Beauty started whining, then pacing the bed, then nudging me with her cold wet nose.

I tried the moron's method, which involved yelling "SHUT UP" and rolling over in bed.  This method accomplishes nothing other than venting my irritation.

After several repetitions of all of the above, I gave in to the inevitable.  As soon as I turned on the light, Beauty bounded over to give me a cheerful beagle morning greeting.  When I opened the bedroom door, Olli fell inward as he had been supporting himself on it.  I was very tempted to kick a few cats out of my way, but they're all pointy and I was barefoot.

It's sad how much difference that one hour of missed sleep makes to me.  It makes the difference between needing to write a note to remember to get things at the grocery, and needing to write a note so you don't forget the thing you need to do in thirty seconds.  Unfortunately, thirty seconds is longer than it takes me to find my pen and my sticky pad and write a whole note, so I forgot a lot today.