Thoughts on the late shift

I remember when I was growing up that my mom used to iron at two in the morning. It was funny how I discovered this: when we still lived in New York, there was (of all things) a mild tremor in the middle of the night. I was shaken awake, ran to my parents' room, screaming, "Hurricane!" (Apparently, earthquakes were a little out of my realm of possibility.) My dad was, maturally, very much asleep and very confused as I woke him up. And my mom... was nowhere in sight. This also freaked me out. Then my mom yelled from downstairs that it was a quake (which I remember did not calm me down any). I went down and saw that she was doing all the ironing and it was 2am. I remember asking why she was ironing in the middle of the night and she said, "Well, I'm just used to it."

I'm beginning to see how this happened. I've always been more of a night owl anyway -- ask anyone who has lived with me, or Dave Kaiser, just how hard it is to get me up in the morning -- but now, I'm finding I'm getting some work done late at night because of Xan. These days, I've been on Xan duty until about 3-4am (by choice) and, when I'm giving him to Ange instead of giving him a bottle, I look for something useful but quick to do. Like dishes. Or laundry, which is tonight.

In fact, it seems I'm doing quite a bit in these wee hours. In addition to blogging, I'm getting better at responding to my email typing one-handed and doing some of the reading I need to do for the fall. No real writing getting done, alas, but this isn't a total waste.

Which leads me to wonder: although I'm looking forward to it, what will happen when he gets through the night?