My coworker's mom is a bigtime quilter. She made a very cool quilt when Victoria was born. She has four granddaughters of quilting age, two of whom belong to my coworker. Last week, they all met each day at my coworker's home for quilt camp. It was supposed to be an opportunity for everyone to get a lot of work done on their fair entries.

My coworker mentioned that her mom has become cranky with age. She was a little amused and a little annoyed to report that her mom was frustrated when the start of quilt camp was delayed by some campers who insisted upon sleeping past 7am. I said that I'm not a morning person myself, but that I could understand her mom. I said that if I had something planned, even something super-wonderful that I was very excited about--especially something super-wonderful that I was very excited about--and the other people involved preferred to delay it by staying in bed for an hour or, to be honest, for any extra time at all, then I would be miffed. I would feel like, "Why bother then?" and act huffy all day and probably skip the super-wonderful thing altogether.

My coworker said that I had described the situation at her house precisely and that perhaps the crankiness was not borne of age at all. She is now attributing it to Lutheranism, saying maybe it was something in the jello salad.