On Loop

Written on Friday, December 14, 2007

When I wake up in the morning I usually have a song that plays over and over in my head. And it’s usually only a short phrase from the song that plays again and again, a broken record. You’d think this would drive me crazy, but for some reason it doesn’t. It’s actually comforting. My daily process of waking up, finding the sound that’s gonna warm me up for the day, setting the tone. Although, I’m not so sure “setting the tone” is absolutely the best way to describe the inimitable, musical way my brain wakes itself up. Because, while I may have Britney Spears’ TOXIC running through my brain, I’m not necessarily in a man-killing, poison wielding, back-flipping sort of mood. But who knows, maybe I am deep down.

This morning I dragged my dead-ass-tired carcass out of bed at 6:30AM. But instead of the continuous circle of sound looping itself through my sleepy mind, I heard silence. Absolutely nothing.

I believe this is due to the fact that I went to bed around 3AM this morning, having stayed WAY too long a my work’s Christmas party. I was that girl who said, “I’m only staying for like, half an hour” and ended up staying til the DJ started purposefully playing bad early 90’s music to get people off the dance floor. Stupid. I had to be at work by 8AM. Excuse me, I had to have the phones ON and be ready to take calls BY 8AM, meaning I needed to have my exhausted (slightly hung-over) ass in that orthopedically challenged chair by 7:45AM. Because there are SOOO many phones calls at fucking 8AM in the morning. It’s 9AM now and I’m just now hearing signs of four or five other life forms in this building. And I’m positive the majority of the agency won’t be here til 11AM or later or not at all.

Knowing full well that I wouldn’t be able to function properly enough to make myself decent this morning, I took a shower last night, er, this morning rather, got fully clothed and got into bed. When I say fully clothed, I mean FULLY. Everything. Including my coat and scarf. Only thing I didn’t wear were my shoes. So when my alarm went off I literally rolled out of bed, brushed my teeth, put on a hat and got my ass to work.

But there was no music in my head. Just silence. Brain too tired and assaulted by the combination of shouting-to-be-heard, two large glasses of white wine, and ear-ringing club music from the night before.

Then, as I pulled into the parking lot at work, there it was, like magic:

“Guess who’s back, Back again. Shady’s back, Tell a friend . . .”