Let me preface this blog with this statement: I love my sister. I love her so much. But, to me, Food is the single most infuriating being on this planet for one – very good – reason.

Sleep is a precious thing. I love sleep more than I love chocolate and wine combined, and those of you who know me know that’s quite a bold assertion. I would proudly wear this shirt all day, every day, because it may as well be my life motto. But I am a night owl. I can’t go to sleep at 9:00 PM, and I have literally no idea why. (Actually I do… scientifically it’s this, but you get the gist.) I’d rather be in bed at 2:00 AM and get up at 10 AM (or really, if I’m honest with myself and allow time for wallowing in the misery of having to NOT be asleep, 10:30) than go to bed at the reasonable hour of 11 PM and wake up at the ungodly hour of 8 AM. God forbid I have to get up any earlier than 7 AM – you would have a monster on your hands. Food, for some unknown reason, has this horrible, awful, psychotic, she-should-be-locked-away-for-the-good-of-humanity habit of setting alarms in the early morning without ANY intention of actually arising when those alarms go off. 

Let me lay out a typically Fernweh & Food morning for you.

I wake up to the sound of Satan himself blaring from Food’s phone (the MotoX ringtone is absolutely demonic). I turn, bleary-eyed, to see her snooze Alarm #1. I look at my clock – 7:30 AM. What the heck. I go back to sleep. 

Five minutes later, I jolt awake to the sound of snarling dogs right next to my ear. Food snoozes Alarm #2 and I glare her into acquiescence before huffing, grabbing my pillow, and rolling over to sleep for another few minutes. 

By Alarm #5 I am usually fed up and am willing to spend the rest of my life in prison to get more than 10 minutes of consecutive sleep, and by Alarm #10 I have literally cursed her and all her kin (which, incidentally, are my own), and have maybe thrown a few things at her – clearly I’m not a morning person. 

The thing is, three alarms are fine – even the greatest among us has a deep-seated desire to push the snooze button a couple times. Five alarms are pushing it. But Food schedules somewhere between 15 (on a good morning) and 50 (on an okay morning) alarms within a one and a half hour period to rouse her from her slumber. Some of these alarms come at 10 minutes intervals, while, by her own admission, she sets others to go off 2 MINUTES APART. I’m no Sleeping Beauty, but, after suffering through two hours of what hell must be like, I look absolutely inhuman. My eyes are bloodshot, my face is flushed with anger, and my hair is sticking out in every which direction from tossing my head around and shoving my pillow over my ears to drown out the noise of the devil himself. Meanwhile, Food, used to this unique method of torture, alights gracefully from the bed and traipses her way to the bathroom (it’s not much of a traipse… like 3 feet) while I envision tossing her phone out the window.

Now, to my concerned and loving parents, I say this: your daughters will not kill each other within the next year. Or, to likely address your biggest worry, I solemnly swear I will not kill Food. I’ll just “accidentally” drown her phone.