dusk and dawn

These days seem to disappear into the dusk. They also seem to creep out of the dawn. I'm usually not a witness to the changing morning light, preferring to wake up when the sun's already up, but considering it doesn't rise until almost 8, I've become uncomfortably familiar eating my breakfast in the dark, wrapped in a blanket. I've actually been getting up early enough to have breakfast with Zach, which is pretty much unheard of in the history of our nine years together. He's an early bird. Always has been. He get's anxious if he sleeps past 8 on the weekends. Not me. I inherited my mom's night owl tendencies. She's always up past midnight, creeping around the kitchen, lurking on her computer, flipping between Letterman and Leno. And I'm up too...creeping, lurking and flipping. But not this week. This week I've been trying to shift my clock by getting up early and not snoozing the morning away. Getting up early means that I'm pretty much ready for dinner by 5, but Zach still doesn't get home until 7 or 8 so I have to keep myself busy and out of the house so I don't eat everything in sight. Generally I walk along the lake, but today I wandered to a little cafe called Piazza (Idaplatz 2, 8003 Zürich) that a friend pointed out when we were out walking on the other side of town. I brought a sketch book, ordered a cafe creme, and pretty much just stared out the window for a while. It was nice, a good change of scenery.

This was my type of cafe - my cafe creme came with a cute little mug of cream instead of the typical individual plastic containers. It also arrived on a silver platter with a glass of water and a little chocolate. And it was actually one of the cheaper coffees I've had in a cafe, 4francs (for all my American readers, that is actually cheap).

So I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep this early morning thing up, but I will say that it feels really good to have accomplished two hours of work before 9. What doesn't feel good is feeling exhausted and starved by late afternoon. Zach are you home yet? Only about twenty more minutes until he gets home and we eat leftovers (beef stew).