Other people wake up to a blaring clock radio or the persistent "MEEP-MEEEP-MEEEEP!" nuclear siren of death alarm clock.

I wake up to Adam.

He comes bounding into the room showered and partially dressed and launches himself onto the bed like a kid playing Superman. "Poogle! It's morning! Wakey-wakey!"

That he is that excited to be sharing the day with me is endearing, even treasured. That he can't ease me from the transition from a stone dead sleep to wakefulness with oh, a cup of coffee, a bagel and two sections of the New York Times is something I can usually overlook. Later. After a cup of coffee and two sections of the New York Times.

"Poogle! It's morning! Wakey-wakey!" His face is two inches from face and the first thought of the day is oh, God, I've got morning breath. "Phew! You've got morning breath!" Exactly.

He strokes my head and pats my shoulder. "It's time to get up!"

I reward him for his joy by riffing on "Mrrrrrgph." I stay curled around my pillow for another ten minutes while he goes through his morning routine. He changes his shirt and plays with Lucy and shaves and plops on the bed next to me again. "You've gotta get up!" he says, channeling a life coach. "You've gotta type! You've gotta do good!"

I get up and he cheers as I shuffle off to the bathroom and throw on dirty jeans under the t-shirt I slept in last night. "Poogle! You're up! Now you can type!"

He goes to work, I stagger downstairs, make tea in my new teapot (plain purple!), flip on Headline News and go about the important work of finishing revisions, like building that perfect playlist on iPoddy, checking boards and blogs and e-mails and, urm, writing this.

I gotta type. I gotta do good.