I Got You Babe

Harold Ramis was a genius. I say this because he made me laugh. I mean this because aside from this laughter, he also made me think. I thought about the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. I also had plenty of time to consider the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, and the zen of putting. Mostly what I learned was the way to pace yourself through the endless slog of days that look and sound exactly alike. 
How do I keep things fresh and exciting when every morning it seems I wake up just before the radio next to my bed begins to whisper its AOR reminder. Then I wander into the bathroom where I hear my son's EDM reminder to me that his alarm is now beginning. By the time I make it to the kitchen to pour my customary bowl of granola and glass of juice, that same song has made a loop four times in my son's room. Looping back into my bedroom to get dressed, I hear the music from my son's room, drowning out the soft and more commercially palatable sounds of my clock radio. This is about the time that my wife and I trade "wake up" choruses with one another in what appears to be another vain attempt to rouse my son. Finally, the clock radio in his room begins to do a third more insistent alarm. This one is an annoying beep that starts out slow but slowly builds and intensifies. Still no movement from my son's bed. That's when I feel compelled to point out to my son that I am performing the same function that I have for the past few hundred days, hoping that I might have any other interaction first thing in the morning. 
Stuck in a loop. I know that if I wasn't there for some reason, my son would figure out a way to get himself up and to school without our incessant hounding. It's just part of the program. Rewriting that program is the challenge. Sometimes in the evening before bed, we talk about what that might look or sound like. We've had a lot of great ideas, but mostly it ends up being yet another trip through the ritual we call morning at our house. I know it was different, once upon a time, but I have a hard time distinguishing the now from the then. It was Harold Ramis' movie that helped me understand that it's a learning process. One of these days, it won't be February Second, and I want to be ready.