Looking forward

One thing I look forward to when Cliff retires is his rising earlier in the morning.  
On the shift he's working now, he sleeps until 10 A.M.  That only gives him seven hours of sleep, but he wants to be awakened at 10, and I comply.  
When we were first married, Cliff could sleep till noon with no problem.  I was the early bird.  Things have changed, and if Cliff is off work for any length of time, he adjusts and adapts to my early-bird schedule, give or take an hour or so.  I like a one-hour difference in our getting-up time, because I prefer to drink my three cups of coffee alone before I deal with meeting somebody else's needs.  
Once I have my quiet time, though, I'm ready for Cliff to get up.  I'm a morning person, and I'm tired of not being able to vacuum until after Cliff is gone to work.  Fact is, I don't vacuum much these days, because with him sleeping I don't want to make a bunch of racket.  Here's what happens:  Cliff gets up at 10; he drinks coffee and watches parts of the morning news recorded on the DVR until 11.  We go for our walk, getting back to the house sometime between 11:30 and noon.  Then it's time to prepare dinner, which we normally eat at 1.  If there's something we both like on DVR (The Closer, Memphis Beat, Lie To Me, Pawn Stars) we'll watch that with our meal, and then it's time for Cliff to take a shower and get ready for work.  While he's doing that, I pack his lunch box.  
He leaves at 2:30, and by then, this morning person is totally out of the mood to do much of anything.  


On another note:  There's this man in town who occasionally comes around demanding I do something on the computer for him.  He isn't a friend, just an acquaintance from whom I once bought a horse (not Blue, the horse before him).  Weeks and month can go by without my seeing him, then here he comes; when he comes calling, I know he wants something.  Yesterday he showed up at my door as we were watching Memphis Beat and eating dinner.  I opened the door and greeted him, and here's what he had to say:  "I need you to put an ad on Craigslist; I have a horse I want to sell.  And then I have a bumper to sell, and I want you to put that on Ebay."  
Not "would you please," or "Do you mind" or "could you".  
And no, he doesn't offer me anything in return for these services.  He used to ask me to print stuff for him often, but I finally told him printer ink cartridges are too expensive for me to be doing that.  Oh, and by the way, he has Internet and a computer at home; he just doesn't know how to make use of them.  
My first reply to the orders he barked out was "I don't do Ebay."  
Because you can imagine how complicated it could get with people asking questions and bidding on the item; good grief, the man would be here every day, and I can barely tolerate him for five minutes!  
"Oh, you don't?"  He sounded disappointed.  "Well, OK; but you can put an ad on Craigslist for me?"  
Yes, I told him.  Just don't come at this time of day, because this is when we eat.  
So he's supposed to be here at nine o'clock this morning.  
Last year when I had an abundance of butternut squash and tomatoes in the garden, I made the mistake of telling him on one of his visits to help himself to the produce, and he gladly obliged.  A week or so later I happened to look out my window, and there he was in my garden again.  Uninvited.  Picking sweet peppers that I never had any intention of giving away.  
I'm not shy; I yelled out at him, "Hey, stay out of the sweet peppers."
 So yeah, I can hardly wait until 9 o'clock.  Cliff, of course, will be in bed, and that's a good thing.  He dislikes the guy.  I'm thinking about firing up the laptop and doing this Craigslist thing out in the yard, just to keep the man out of my house.  
Are you wondering why I agreed to even help him?  
Well, it's so simple to put an ad on Craigslist that a six-year-old could do it.  I can't bring myself to refuse to do something that takes so little effort on my part.  Maybe I'll even try to teach him how to do it himself.
Wish me luck.  
By the way, I haven't said anything here that I wouldn't say to his face.
P.S.  It's 9:30 and he hasn't shown up yet.  
P.P.S.  I'll bet he found somebody who would do Ebay AND Craigslist.  Good!  
P.P.P.S.  He showed up.  At ten.  Exactly when I get Cliff up, get him his coffee, fix his cereal, etc. Oh, and what I said about "so little effort"?  Somebody just shoot me.  I must have been out of my mind.  I had to scan pictures, listen to war stories about breaking wild horses, have the guy insinuate "Say It Isn't So", Cliff's favorite movie that's laying on my desk, was a porn flick... I finally told him to leave and come back between 2:30 and 6 and I'd have the pictures ready to put on the ad.  This time I am not optimistic.  I somehow lost two of the four pictures I scanned for him, and I am NOT going to scan them again.