The light is different at 5 a.m.

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." (Marcus Aurelius)

First it was contractions at 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning. On Wednesday it was the odd sensation that I had slept until four in the afternoon somehow. (Pshaw...like that's happened in the last decade or so...)

Today, well, I dreamed that I had a tea cup poodle (apricot) named Agatha Christie. When Boo stirred in the next room over, there was no way my disappointment in NOT having a tea cup poodle named Agatha Christie was going to let me go back to sleep. (I have a dream and a mission now, by the way. Husband will come around EVENTUALLY!)

I'm getting more and more familiar with 5 a.m. lately and I've got to say, the world looks different at that "dawn" hour than it does at 7 or 8 a.m. (The photo at left was taken at 5:07 a.m. this morning. I know of what I speak!!)

I call it "lemon sunshine." It starts down in our bedroom and illuminates the four walls like it's 3:30 in the afternoon with this cheery, optimistic light that you really want nothing to do with at such an early hour.

It could be the yellow curtains on our window...but when I drag my sorry carcass up the stairs, that same lemony goodness is pouring through the french doors from the back deck. It's waiting to shine on my cup of Irish Breakfast and it damn near blinds the poor bird in his cage.

(You know, Hawk...the parakeet that thinks he's a cat and meows? Yes, him. He needs sunglasses.)

There's just no way you can be sore at the world in sunshine like that. There's no way you can't think today is going to be a GREAT day because you were up at the a#$ crack of morning and got your fill of some personal sunshine and breathing space that you didn't have to share with anybody.

Have you looked around lately? Moments without chaos and noise are rare. Polar bear's melting habitat rare, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's the body prepping me for the enduro-sport headed my way that is called life with a newborn. Maybe I'm turning into an uber, ultra morning person who can't stay awake past the evening news at 6:30. Maybe.

All I can say is that if all mornings look like these ones do, early risers know something the rest of us don't. The world belongs to a select few at such an early hour and that's kind of a good thing.