Sitting and staring. It’s the new coffee.

Getting out of bed just sucks. And so does the first two hours of being out of bed. I’m just stupid till noon, and the sad thing is I haven’t slept till noon in 25 years. That means I spend the first half of my day awake and stupid. So I do the thing I do best before noon. I sit and stare. Believe me. It’s best for everybody.

Sitting and staring is an everyday activity—or non-activity—for me. I like to think I’ve raised it to an art form. Still. I know I could get a lot more done if I hit the floor running. In pursuit of such an unlikely possibility, I keep set whatever appointments I have early in the morning hoping to disrupt that sit and stare thing.

Oh. The horror.

(And no. That is not me. But thank you for asking.)

What happens is, I make the appointment for, say, 9:00. I set the radio alarm for 7. I hear it come on, and I’m conscious, but not provoked to move. Yet. However, that radio gets only two stations. On both of them the music is at first innocuous, barely noticeable. Kind of like milquetoast for your ears. But by 7:30 either Toby Keith belts out “God Bless the U.S.A.” or Baha Men scream “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

Either way, once I’m awake enough to crawl out of bed and whack the radio with a lamp base (possibly why it only gets two stations), I figure I’ll stay up since I do have that appointment. “Up” is what I call it, anyway.

I stagger to sit and stare headquarters, AKA the couch. On a good day I sit and stare at a recording of The Daily Show. On a regular day I sit and stare at the blank screen. On a bad day I sit and stare at the floor.

So there I am with a 9:00 appointment. A bad day already, but it’s only 7:30. Time to spare. But at 8:30 I’m still sitting. And staring. At 8:40 it suddenly occurs to me that I have 20 minutes to get to wherever I’m going. I race upstairs and throw on some clothes, usually but not always right-side-out.

Sometimes I notice the clothing mishap before I get where I’m supposed to be and sometimes I don’t. If you ever see a bleary eyed woman in a parking garage wrestling to get a t-shirt over her head with her sunglasses still on, it’s not me. I’ve heard of people doing it, though. Security guards will gossip.

Not much you can do about wearing two different shoes. Not that I have.

I’m practically Little Miss Sunshine when I get to my appointment.  And when I say Little Miss Sunshine I mean that when I’m spoken to I don’t karate chop the speaker in the throat. Well, there was that one time. And it wasn’t a karate chop so much as it was a screeching fit. And she didn’t so much speak to me as drive beside me on the expressway.

I still maintain that the incident was a perfectly reasonable reaction to extreme provocation. I had a 9:15 doctor’s appointment and I’d overslept. Consequently, sitting and staring wasn’t an option. I had to get in the car and go. Now, you may not know this, but sitting and staring in a moving vehicle can result in—let’s just say “issues.” Of the motorcycle cop type. For some reason they’re always alert. Must be the wind in their faces.

So I was running late and traffic was backed up, and this woman pulled up beside me in a Hummer.

I get mad at the thought of a Hummer, and this wasn’t just any Hummer, either. It was a Hummer painted the University of Oklahoma school colors. Maroon and cream. How precious is that? And the woman driving it had on an OU ball cap with her little blonde ponytail hanging out the back. She was cute as a bug. Kristin Chenoweth on steroids.

I did what anybody who had not had sufficient time to sit and stare would do. I powered down the passenger side window and screamed, “YOU THINK YOU’RE CUTE! BUT YOU’RE NOT CUTE! YOU’RE STUPID!”

Needless to say, she seemed a little startled. She should have thought of that before she got behind the wheel of a Hummer. And before she got blonde. And cute.

Like I said. Inadequate sitting and staring is dangerous for all of us.