I am not a morning person. I was more of a mid-morning person. However, being a new mom has made me a no-time-of-day person. Even so, my dislike for early mornings trumps all other times. I despise getting up before the sun rises or even shortly after it rises or, hell let’s be honest, before 7am. However, since I need to pump at least three times a day and have the sessions spread as equally as possible over a 24-hour period, it’s necessary for me to drag my ass out of bed once between 4am and 6am.  

I’ve been lucky enough to catch “The Venture Brothers” on at 4, but more often than not, the baby wakes up around 5:15 or snoozes until 6. After Looney Tunes goes off at 5:30 a.m., there isn’t much on basic cable until 9 a.m. Sure, “Charmed” comes on at 7, but I’m over that show. That narrows my choices down to a variety of infomercials, the Weather Channel, and morning news.

Why watch anything? Well, it takes my mind off the machine that is sucking milk out of me, which is unpleasant to say the least. I’ll skip those TMI details for now. Anyway, to distract me from the Dread Milkmaid Machine, I was switching from Cartoon to Weather and squirming my way through Wake Up With Al. However, this past Monday, I got to feeling like if I had to watch Stephanie Abrams for one more second, I was gonna run screaming into the front yard - boobs loose and everything.

I switched to the news. Not local news, but close enough. News from the most populous city in my state. 

I saw the story about the bacon sundae at Burger King, which made me crave IHOP stuffed French toast. I grew hungry and agitated. Then came the story of a 20-year-old boy who was shot and killed while chasing down two burglars in the projects. His family is taking donations because they can’t afford to bury him.

Someone please tell me: what happens to you when your family can’t afford to bury you?

That story was followed by one where a 20-year-old kid shot and killed three other 20-year-old kids at a college party over a girl. There is a state-wide manhunt for this kid, and he is gonna fry for that. The three kids he killed were college football players, and if you need to understand know anything about the South, it’s that people treat football like a religion (I’ll spare you a detailed metaphor).

The moral of this story is that I never should’ve watched the news. It’s terribly depressing, and I don’t need any more of that in my life right now. No, I should’ve stuck with Al Roker and my Local On the 8’s. They at least balance horrific weather events with videos of puppies bounding through snow drifts.