Getting Up, Getting Out the Door

Lately, I've been having the hardest time getting out of bed and out the door on time.

Yesterday, my "leave the house" alarm went off while I was in the shower.  I've never showered so fast in my life.

Also, my "leave the house" alarm is the X-Files theme song.  It adds a real sense of urgency, like "put on your mascara faster, the aliens are coming!"  

(That song used to be my ring tone, but it used to scare me every time someone called, so I had to change it to something more innocuous.)

You know why it's so hard to get out of bed?  It's the darned cat's fault.  The alarm goes off, which signals her to activate snuggle/smother mode, which means she moves from her station at the foot of the bed and onto my neck/face/shoulder/hip.  I try to move, she adjusts.  That early in the morning, I'm powerless to overcome the comfort of a big, plushy cat purring away.

Anyway, I've been trying to aid my getting-out-the-door-within-20-minutes-of-on-time process by setting out my clothes the night before, having my breakfast and lunch items all grouped in the fridge, and gathering up all my work items (which are usually strewn about the house because I'm always working when I get home from work) and shoving them in my ginormous purse/laptop bag, which somehow always seems to weigh 20 lbs more in the morning than it does at the end of the day.

Consequently, my aforementioned ginormous purse/laptop bag always gets the following comments:

"Wow, that's a big purse!"
"I see you're moving in."
"Is that luggage?"

Everybody's a comedian.

What I try to explain is that it's usually got a laptop in it, which is why it's so large.  What I don't explain is that it's really just a structured bag of garbage and lipstick when there's no laptop in it.

I'm certain that anyone reading this post is asking him/herself, "What is the point of this post?"  The answer is, "absolutely none."

So what does everyone else do to get out the door on time?  Anyone?