Why I Can't Get to Bed Earlier

It's 10:18. The dinner dishes have been washed and the kitchen is clean; the last load of laundry is finishing in the basement while the others have been folded and sorted. Allison Clare is sleeping soundly upstairs; Sam is entertaining himself with World of Warcraft and his high school friends and their, um, guild; and I've finished one syllabus for the start of spring classes on Wednesday.  It's just me, the cat, my chocolate sundae, and a pile of magazines/my laptop/unilateral control of the TiVo remote. I should go to bed right this minute so that when Allison Clare wakes up, I won't want to plead and bargain for it to be untrue that it's time to get up . . . but I just can't manage to give up this time.

I think it's because since we've had AC, our lives have been quite boring and routinized ("Hey guys, we can go out to dinner, but we'll have to slip out by 6:00 so we can put AC down to bed by 6:30 . . .), yet simultaneously fraught with constant risk and vacillation between disappointment and triumph ("What are the chances we'll make it through dinner before she starts shrieking joyfully?").  It constantly feels like we're just managing to pull something off, which has had the effect of making me more of a planner (more eventualities to accommodate all the time) and more adaptable ("Oh well, maybe next time") at the same time.  It's made me grateful for moments like this, whenever they come; when the house is settled for the night, I appreciate its quietude all the more.