Mornings at Casa Dralle

Our weekly morning schedule runs like a well-oiled machine: Jordan’s body is rolled-over at exactly 6:30 a.m., at which point she makes some sort of noise and buries her head under her pillow.

Depending on how late I’ve stayed up the night before (or if I have even gone to bed yet), I’ll either head downstairs to start coffee or flop down next to Jordan. At 6:50 the second alarm sounds, and Jordan pops out of bed like toast, grabs a quick breakfast, steps into her clothes laid-out the night before, brushes her hair and teeth and pretends not to use my makeup. Flying down the stairs, Jordan catapults into her boots and coat, flings on her backpack and flies out the door at 7:05. Magic!

We’re at her school’s front door within ten minutes, and by 7:25 I’m back in our kitchen. Golden time – everyone is still asleep, the house is quiet for another thirty minutes until Jamie’s feet hit the floor running (even the dog and cats have yet to make an appearance) and there’s a full pot of coffee.

Sometimes I would glance at the paper, throw in a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher or start checking my email. But since the first of the year, I have spent this quiet time taking advantage of just being quiet. Looking out the window and watching the birds, I let my mind wander and plan out the rest of the day.

Jamie rolls out of bed at 8:00, school clothes in tow, and heads toward the kitchen for breakfast. Ready in less than ten minutes, Jamie and I spend the next twenty minutes talking about his upcoming day, some new skate moves, and what I’ll be working on that day. A kiss on the cheek and he’s out the front door, walking one block to his school in less than five minutes.

But Jamie wasn’t rolling this morning. His head was hurting and he was tired of being up twice during the night with a bloody nose. He had a low fever, so I covered him back up and he promptly fell back to sleep.

Ever since Jamie’s nose was broken in what is now referred to as “The Unfortunate Water Balloon Incident of 2007,” his nose is hyper sensitive to dry, inside air. His nose never bleeds during the day, only between the hours of one and four a.m. This morning he was shooting for a new record, two nosebleeds in three early morning hours.

I started to rub my forehead, feeling a “bad sleep” headache coming on. Dull and thudding behind my eyeballs, I decided to not take the chance and went into my bathroom to grab my migraine meds. I would sneak a quick peek at my emails and then lie down for an hour, hitting the self-employed “morning reset” button.

I walked into my bathroom and stopped short. The double vanity sink in front of me looked like a crime scene ripped from “Silence of the Lambs.” To the right, blood was everywhere – the sink top, the bowl, the faucet. Blood droplets covered the lower half of the mirror. Wads of bloody tissue surrounded the wastebasket, not one tissue making its intended mark.

To the left, my small black makeup case looked like it had exploded with the force of a pipe bomb: Blush and eye shadow containers in the sink, eye liners scattered like discarded crayons, mascara and multiple brushes on the floor, the eyelash curler stuck to the countertop in a goop of toothpaste.

A circus clown had been slaughtered in my bathroom.

Thud, thud, thud. Note to self: Remind Jordan how to sparingly use eye shadow; remind myself to not use that applicator unless I was going for that new Black Swan look. I stared in the clean side of the mirror. Second note to self: Buy under-eye concealer. Stat.

The only thing more amazing than the sheer force of the destruction was how perfectly Jordan and Jamie managed to contain their individual messes to their own sides of the sink.

I grabbed the always handy bleach water spray bottle (it is cold and flu season, you know), and soaked the crime scene, then turned my attention to putting my makeup away. I wondered how many more years I had before Jordan would spend much more time in front of this mirror, rising earlier and earlier to straighten her hair, wear the perfect eye shadow, pick the perfect lip gloss.

I rummaged through the closet and found my medication, grabbed a glass of water and began the hazmat cleanup in earnest. God forbid Jim or I ever meet an untimely ending and some poor investigator ‘blue lights’ the bathroom looking for trace evidence. No jury in the world would believe the nosebleed defense.

Thud, thud, thud, and little sparkly stars in my peripheral vision: Bleach fumes and lavender candles were not a pleasing combination, so I quickly finished the task at hand and dropped back into bed, setting my phone alarm for ninety minutes later.

I closed my eyes and felt the medication slowly kick in, and as the lapses in thuds grew further apart, I began to dream about running late for a final exam that I had never studied for.

An hour later the phone alarm beeped, and it was time to start Thursday again.