Forget time zones...it's a different day in my kitchen!

To say Skippy has an off beat schedule is a vast understatement.  The boy is want to be up for stretches of 24-30 hours at a shot and then sleep for just as long.  If he had any interest in medicine, he'd blast through those mega shifts in the first couple years.

But he works almost full time most weeks at a restaurant, and likes it well enough  while he's trying to figure out what he's going to do with his life.  We barely see him and even more rarely speak to him on the phone.  He's sort of a shadowy figure that let's us know where he is by which shoes he leaves in the front hall.

The other thing Hubby and I rarely do is speak to anyone on the phone in the wee hours of the morning.  We did that in the college years, when you stayed up until dawn debating pretty much everything, or, my case, trying to fit into things in the woman's dorm.  (For the record, I could fit into the drier, not the washing machine.)  We talked to our babies in the week hours of the morning when they woke and demanded food, diapers, cuddling. 

Well our babies are 16 and 19 now, and can cook and feed themselves.  And they have significant others to cuddle, so they don't look for it much from us.

Which means that at four in the morning, you can predictable find us asleep, in bed, with our phones quietly charging, waiting to jolt us awake at 5:30.

Not Skippy, not his place of work.

So imagine my shock when I woke to Hubby speaking to someone in the dark.  No, it wasn't the State Farm people who will answer your insurance questions at 3 in the morning.  (Did any of us ask for that service by the way?) 

He said, "We're in bed."

I said, "Who are you talking to?"

He said, "Skippy."



Nothing says 4 AM like a Grand Slam.

Now Skippy will, at times, text us late at night to let us know he's home or to let us know he's staying over at a friend's house, or he's going to Denny's or something. 

The last time he called either of us before dawn, he was on a cold Montana highway and his car was destroyed.  I, of course, went into full on MOM MODE.

"Where is he?"

Hubby says, "He's in the kitchen."

"Our kitchen?"

Hubby waves me off and said into the phone, "It's 4 AM."

He chuckles and turns off the phone.  "Apparently,"  he says, "Skippy woke up and saw that it was almost 4 and knew he had to work at 5."

Skippy never, ever works before 10 AM.  His place of business doesn't open until 10:30.  But he does sleep in a basement room with no windows.  And he was asleep the previous day when I got home from work at 6 as he sometimes is on days he doesn't work or works and earlier shift.

So it stands to reason that his internal clock was a tiny bit off.

"But why did he call you?"

"Because,"  says Hubby, "he got up, got dressed came upstairs and saw all our cars in the driveway, but didn't see any of us.  So he called to find out where we all were and why we were all home at 4."

"So what did you say?"

"I said we were all in bed.  Then he asked why we were in bed at 4, and I told him because it was 4 in the morning."

"So where is he now?"

Hubby curled  back up into a ball.  "He went back to bed.  He's got twelve more hours before he has to go to work."

Oh to have his schedule!