Today’s humdinger of a  blog post prompt (for nutball bloggers): What is your favorite hour of the day?

Ok.  *cracks knuckles*  *scratches head* *notices refrigerator badly needs scrubbing* *contemplates mortality* *considers watching bad television* *wonders if God has read any good blogs lately*

And… Go:

So the best time of the day for me?  5:50 am.  I know.  It’s early, but here’s why:

1.  The house is quiet.  This is miraculous and good.

2.  The house is quiet and still.  It still resembles something from a RealSimple page.  This is mainly because I have not put on my glasses and am still bumping into walls, so I’m not looking too closely.

3.  It’s really really quiet.

4. I can get the first cup of coffee.

5.  I can actually read sentences, from the bible, usually a few in a row, and think about them with no interruptions (see #’s 1-3).  I then get to pray to our gracious Lord whilst NOT having to say things like, “Hold on there Red, Mommy’s praying.  ZIP IT, ok?  I’m talking to Jesus, here.”  This, I know, demonstrates I got some work to to on the whole, erm, “shining a light” thing.

6.  I can run.  No, not away.  Just, run around the block a few times and then, back home. Where it is … (wait for it)

7.  STILL QUIET.

8.  Sometimes I actually get to do pushups with no one else around trying to dog pile me.  Momsie on the floor = tackle Momsie, evidentally.  Added bonus: no one gets to see how I look when I plank.  Which is a blessing, let me tell you.  Even toddlers judge, ya’ll.

9.  I get to have a second cup of actual coffee from the coffee pot. It’s not the first cup, remicrowaved seventeen times.

10. There is a pronounced duration of NO NOISE.

And there’s this thing about the loveliness of a winter morning.  The light is tilted and seems brighter, somehow, as it glints off the frost.  Everything seems clean and still, and as I open the front door for my run, I take a deep breath and-

AH HECK NAH IT’S COLD OUT HERE!

I lied.  There, I said it. I USED to love 5:50 am.  Y’all, I haven’t had a decent night’s rest since Y2K.  Ok?  My favorite hour of the day? The one where I’m still in bed.

I have children.  I think about sleep and sigh, longingly  with unfiltered nostalgia.  The almost pre-teen, crazed kinda full tilt, 8th grade slow dance again with Purple Rain, Laura Ashley puffed sleeves, and your first love, a pimply kid named Jimmy who chewed pencils,  sort of nostalgia.   I want coma sleep again.  The “it is so ON” kinda sleep.  Drool sleep.  Not one ear open, waiting for the toddler apocolypse kinda half way incorporating the cat in my dreams b/c she keeps gnawing at my leg kinda sleep.

Real, deep, Snow White kinda sleep.  It is the butter on my biscuit, my friends.

Sooooo.  My favorite hour?  The one in which I get to zonk out, solid.   And I know usually that’s at night, but hey, if you can catch a nap while Barney is on, so be it.  Barney does dance into your dreams, however.  Be warned.  Barney’s just creepy enough to be one step and a bad sweater away from Freddy Krueger.

Let’s face it: