Okay, I have to admit it: ever since the nest emptied out (last kid going off to college and all), I’ve been sleeping late. Gloriously, happily late.

There are some bad parts of not having kids at home–for instance, if you make cookies, you have to lick all the beaters yourself, and that can make you gain weight. But as a person who has basically been sleep-deprived for years, I have to say that getting to sleep late is definitely one of the perks and may be even restoring certain brain cells that have been dormant for years. When you’re an empty nester, the morning comes, high school buses roam the streets before dawn, but you just roll over, pull the covers up a little higher, and keep right on with your snoring. 

But yesterday was different. We had to make ourselves get up early because it was Snow Tire Day. (The weather people have been nearly hysterical lately, trying to get the populace all alarmed about the Dreaded First Snow of the Season, so we knew we had to do this.) Never mind that the expected accumulation is something less than one-thirtieth of a half inch, and even that might be mixed with rain–or may even BE rain. But no matter. Snow tires must be put on cars in December. I have accepted this.

So by seven-thirty we were up, dressed, and out of the house, which is not the way I have pictured my life going, believe me. By the crack of eight o’clock, we had our cars in the long line at the tire store, and had headed across the street for breakfast and a caffeine drip.

Well, I hesitate to tell what we did next, for fear you will think I’m bragging. We walked to three stores and did actual Christmas shopping. Bought for at least five people! And then…well, once you’ve done something like that by nine in the morning, there is just no way to stop.

After we got the cars back, we went to the grocery store, for the week’s shopping, came home and winterized the screen porch by putting up the sixteen plasticene panels, vacuumed the house, cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned out the Thanksgiving leftovers out of the refrigerator, went outside and threw out all the dead chrysanthemums, planted little Christmasy-type evergreen trees in the planters by the front door, put the fans in the attic, closed all the storm windows, pitched ten years’ accumulation of useless decorative baskets, scrubbed out the coolers that had been mildewing on the screened porch since summer, then came in and did two loads of laundry and swept up fourteen indoor tumbleweeds of dog hair.

Then I looked at the clock. It was 2:10.

By 4:30, I wanted dinner, and by 8 p.m., I was ready to go back to bed. I think this is how old people get started. You know what happens next: I’ll have my Christmas shopping done in July, and you’ll see me in line at all the really good Early Bird Specials.