My Dog is Chelsea

As we know all too well, when I have deadlines, I procrastinate (hence this blog). When I have many, many deadlines, I procrastinate excessively to the point of absurdity, perhaps out of some bizarre masochistic tendency to create even more stress than already exists. The last weeks have been of the latter variety, resulting in a flurry of blog posts and similar abuses of the precious amounts of time I have to work towards said deadlines.

Thus, I present to you one of the results of my procrastination, also known as my contribution to XMX 3.0: The Morning Mix: Songs to Make the Waking-Up Process a More Pleasant Experience (formerly titled “The Morning Mix: Songs to Wake Up To,” but the dangling preposition was kind of annoying).

I am NOT a morning person. I love mornings, don’t get me wrong, but waking up is so bloody awful that it can sometimes physically hurt to get out of bed and turn off the alarm clock that has been disrupting my dreams for the last forty-five minutes.

One time, as a counselor at a sleepaway camp, I was responsible for waking the entire place with the 7:15 reveille bugle call. Mind you, 7:15 is early enough, but have you ever tried playing a brass instrument at that hour? After sleeping all night, your lips are swollen and your tongue isn’t flexible and it’s nearly impossible to make any sort of noise—let alone a discernable note—without warming (and waking) up.

But that would require getting out of bed even earlier, which was clearly not an option, considering that I routinely slept through reveille and only sometimes got up in time to play the next call 15 minutes later. More often, however, the only bugle blast to pierce the cool morning air was the five-minutes-to-breakfast tune, immediately followed by the okay-it’s-time-for-breakfast call. And, naturally, all of those bugle calls would be late, so breakfast would start at 7:55 instead of 7:45.

One morning I woke up to the head of the kitchen standing outside my cabin window at 7:35 am with a butcher knife and a very, very angry glare in his eyes screaming my name on the top of his lungs. “GET THE HELL OUT OF BED! THE GODDAMN WAFFLES WILL BE COLD BY THE TIME YOU BLOW THAT FUCKING BUGLE!” was along the lines of what he said.

I’ve since discovered that some nice mellow music in the AM helps make waking up more tolerable. In fact, if I set my alarm to play music for a half hour before the DEET DEET DEET of my alarm begins, I actually wake up relatively easily. Of course, if I could have things my way, I’d make all of the songs on this mix particularly mellow so that by the end of the disc you’re ready to crawl right back into bed and play hooky. But I realize that this would be counterproductive, so instead the ending songs are slightly louder and more upbeat—to help you get up, stretch and realize that even though the blankets are warm and the pillows soft, the day outside is even more alluring.

Trust me, it’s better than waking up to a screaming chef wildly swinging a butcher knife at your window screen.

The track list (subject to procrastination-related bouts of tweaking and editing, which happen often, so you might get a slightly different CD than the following):

Time Has Told Me :: Nick Drake
The Light (Part II) :: Mason Jennings
Devils & Dust :: Bruce Springsteen
The Only Living Boy In New York :: Simon & Garfunkel
Sleeping In :: The Postal Service
Dream Cafe :: Greg Brown
Up Against the Wall :: The Be Good Tanyas
If Not For You :: Bob Dylan
Pink Moon :: Nick Drake
Don’t Cry Baby :: Madeleine Peyroux
Can’t Get It Right Today :: Joe Purdy
Tupelo Honey :: Van Morrison
Late In The Evening :: Paul Simon
California Stars :: Wilco
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay :: Otis Redding
Send Me On My Way :: Rusted Root
Mushaboom :: Feist

Want a copy? Send me an email with your address. The only caveat is that in turn, you send me a mix, per TimsHead’s guidelines.

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee the timely shipment of the above mix. I may procrastinate for a very long time before going to post office. Or, I might have a pressing deadline which necessitates an urgent trip to… the post office! You never know. It’s kind of a crapshoot. But I promise to try to mail all discs before next month.