by Kathy Clark Smith

Created on: June 17, 2009

I have to admit that there is a facet of my personality that drives my boyfriend nuts. I am "time challenged" . . . okay, I'll say it: I'm chronically late. In my professional life, I am never late or miss an appointment, but in my personal life? That's when I slow down.

So here we are, traveling to our weekend getaway destination and our flight leaves at 7am. My boyfriend, who prides himself on being punctual, has declared our schedule. The flight leaves at 7, we need to be at the airport at 6, need to leave the house at 5 and then he looks at me questioning, "How long will it take you to get ready?" "Seconds", I replied. I had already decided that it was going to be a no make-up day for me. It's an early morning; I'm stumbling out of bed and on holidays. That's all the convincing I need to "let my hair down" and go into camping/Mexico/holiday mode and disregard the irritating female morning routine.

The night before, my boyfriend and I began one of our favourite pastimes: eating. We enjoy making a big production of dinner, lovingly preparing the food in delicious anticipation of the explosion of flavours to come. We accompany this tradition with our beverage of choice and great music that will have us twirling, dipping and gyrating amongst the slicing and dicing. When the meal was done and our pallets satisfied, we realized there were only a couple of hours before our alarm would be buzzing. We decided that two hours of sleep was better than none and off we went for our "nap".

Two hours later and bleary-eyed, we stumbled out of bed. According to my boyfriend's schedule, we were to be in the vehicle in mere minutes. My eyes were fighting to open as I looked in the mirror and recoiled with horror at the tired, winter-white face looking back at me. I glanced down at my make-up. "Just a tad of color", I murmured, "I don't want to look ... you know, sick or something." And so the deviation from best laid plans began.

Twenty minutes later, bounding down the stairs and ready to go, I see the familiar look of irritation on my boyfriend's face. I wince, realizing we're off to a shaky start. I know it's important for him to be on schedule . . . but honestly, did he see me when we got up? I really had to add a little color to my face.

Gathered into his vehicle, my addiction shamelessly kicked in and I begged for coffee. We stopped at the local gas bar, grabbed our coffee and waited in line to pay for it (who else is up on a Saturday at this hour?). Back in the

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