It's a good thing I slept in

This morning, I didn't have to get up at my usual time of 5:15. Why do I even get up so early? It's so that I can have one good hour of "me time" before taking on the mom stuff and the usual busy-ness of my day starts up. I spend this time praying, reading, having my first cup of coffee for the day -- and writing, if I'm so inclined. (Some mornings, I wake up with a whole lot of stuff crammed into my head that I NEED to get down onto paper.)

But not this morning.

Earlier in the day yesterday, the coffeemaker got knocked over while I was making a fresh pot of coffee and the glass carafe fell to the floor, shattering into pieces. The water spilled out of the machine and all over the stove, flooding the stove! (Oh, what fun it was to clean up all of THAT mess!) When I was chatting with my publisher later, I told her about what happened and she mentioned her gratitude for not having a glass carafe. She even sent me a link of one that had a neat, futuristic metal carafe. (Hey! I love sci-fi, so I'm totally into anything that looks futuristic!)

I was not happy that I wouldn't be able to have my morning coffee in the a.m., but cheered up by the prospect of hitting a Starbucks instead. (Actually, I ended up hitting the coffee service station at a market down the street. The coffee I got is called "Hi-Rev Cappuccino" and it's actually pretty good.)

So last night, when I got to bed at around midnight, I was grateful for the chance to get an extra hour of sleep. (I stayed up late submitting poems.) This midnight-to-5:15 sleep schedule I've had has made me cranky. Despite giving me one hour of peace. So I was glad to have extra time to sleep. I think getting enough sleep should be more important than having a little "me time." All the same, I woke up at my usual time this morning. And I went back to sleep. Lately, I don't prefer to sleep in or get more sleep after I awaken, because I end up having bad dreams. (A sign not to oversleep? I wonder.) So I went back to sleep. Instead of a bad dream, though, I had an interesting dream.

You know the kind. The kind of dream where you wake up and say, "That would make a great story!"

Actually, I put a "WHOA" before that sentence. Haha.

But, yeah. I had a very interesting story dream. And I became excited about writing this story. When I wrote out the story idea on paper, just so that I wouldn't forget it later on, it became something bigger than just what I saw in the dream. I added more details and plot twists. No names, though. There weren't any names in this dream! Gah! But that's not the important part right now. Right now, what mattered was the story. And getting this story idea down so that I could remember it to write later on. (Didn't have the time to write the story itself after I wrote out the idea. I could take hours to write a short story. And I didn't have that window of time just yet. Some stories take me days to write because I run out of time while at work on them!)

So I got a new story to write just from sleeping in this morning. For once, no bad dream. So maybe it's a good thing I gave myself this break and got some extra sleep. The coffee carafe broke, I slept in because I couldn't have my morning coffee, and I got a story idea because I slept in. And I got to enjoy a very yummy cup of cappuccino this morning instead of plain ol' black coffee. Interesting how things work out like that.