Waking Up is Hard to Do.

Good Morning, Starshine!

The Earth and I both say hello.  We've reached page 30 of "Saturday" the book.  It's now Sunday morning in India McGreevy's world.  It was an awful week for the entire McGreevy clan, followed closely by a bizarre, wonderful, baffling Saturday.  And now, as Sunday morning begins to open up like a stranger in line at the grocery store, India is dragged from the comfort of sleep and once again confronted with consciousness.

They say that there are four stages of sleep: Three "NREM" and one "REM", which are designated by theta waves and sciencey stuff like that.  I posit that there are an equal number of stages to waking up, but these are a lot closer to the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief.  The four stages of waking up go:

Stage 1, Denial:  As in, "That hand nudging me awake isn't real.  It's just part of a dream I'm having and soon it will go away and I'll get back to flying my magic turnip through the land of Vienna Sausages."

Stage 2, Confusion:  Whu?  Wha goway, me kep sleppy time.

Stage 3, Anger:  I kill you, scum.

Stage 4, Bargaining: Five more minutes.

Stage 5: Acceptance.  There are only four stages of waking up.  Because I've never, ever accepted waking up.

In this panel, India seems to be between stages 2 and 3, based on the expression on her face.  This is a familiar phase to me.  In the words of Louis C.K.: "Getting up is this whole thing because first I have to ask myself, 'Do I really want to be alive anymore'?

And what comes after stage 4 of the Waking Cycle?  The worst stage of all.  It's an extremely long, painful stage I call "Awake-ishness".  It usually lasts for about 15 hours and can be identified by its over-abundance of human interactions, work, and precisely zero visits to the land of Vienna Sausages in your flying magic turnip.

Cheers.