What Waking Up At 11AM Feels Like, Depending on Whether You Planned To Sleep In Until 11AM the Night Before or It Happened By Accident

If planned:

• I really must do something for the villagers…they are so faithful, so simple, so charmingly dishonest…they adore me of course, and are for ever bringing me humble wheels of cheese and shiny objects discovered in the forest…they steal, of course, but in so becoming and open-handed a fashion that one really cannot help but almost love them…perhaps I will throw them a fête, or take them all on a trip to the sea-side…

• After my tea I shall go over my correspondence with a slim razored letter-opener

• It feels so good to be Orson Welles and Oscar Wilde at the same time…I am at the height of my powers…only the most lissom fat coats my splendid mighty frame…how my genius sprawls across the nation, and how magnificent my laziness grows to match it…the nation waits for me…

• Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.

  “Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!”

• I wonder if I shall meet Richard in the gardens again today….I really must make up my mind about him…

• Please, dim the lights — please, lower your voice — I cannot leave my bed before noon. Such vulgarities pain me – the Princess and the Pea was my mother, you know, and I am sensitive in the extreme to any coarseness, and require medical-grade cosseting at all times

• Perhaps I shall drive out the chestnut horses to-day

• First I shall have my tea in bed, then my coffee at the breakfast-table — then a quick review of the estates with my men — then a civilized stroll with Rotundra Blakegood in the geometry gardens — then a quick, blistering ride on Bucephalus — dueling in the afternoon, intrigue in the evening, and a masquerade on the canals to follow — I wonder if I shall see that masked man again? How does he happen to have the other half of the locket my mother gave me as she lay dying?

If unplanned:

• Oh God, it’s over

• Everything good is over

• Everything good happened already and is finished for goddamned ever and I missed it

• Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ it’s here

• The Rapture happened and I missed it

• It’s going to be dark in six hours

• By the time I’m ready for lunch it’s going to be night

• And I won’t sleep tonight, I can tell you that right now. This is going to take at least four days to fix, so there goes the next four days, too.

• Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful

• Everyone left. They all left without me. And they’re somewhere.

• And I’m OLD. I woke up OLD. My youth was eaten by snakes in the night and I awoke into awful grayness

• I’m already dead and I am looking at my death

Additionally, if you have slept until 11AM as a teenager, and one of your older relatives says something like “Finally!” or “Look who decided to join us!” or “Good evening” when you wander into the kitchen:

• Oh — you hate me — I knew I never measured up to your cruel and inhuman standards, but until today I never knew that you hate me!

• I’ve never been asleep a day in my life you monster

• My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.