Real Kato Blog: The King of Snooze Alarms

Here it is, after midnight, and I'm still blogging away. This is prime time for me, folks.

I am not a morning person.

I have two alarm clocks. One is a Remington clock that has a lamp in it, and the lamp gradually gets brighter during the half hour before your wake-up time. It also plays the sound of waves or birds chirping or a handful of other simulated natural sounds. You can even put aromatherapy beads on top of it, so that the heat of the lamp causes a pleasant scent to drift over you. Sounds great, right?

Unfortunately, at the end of the half-hour, it reverts to that horrible, jarring electronic beeping just like any other alarm clock. And the pathetic 4-watt light bulb isn't bright enough to light a dollhouse, much less my bedroom. So I replaced the 4-watt bulb with a 25-watt bulb. That was a vast improvement, but the subsequent increase in heat output caused the receptacle for the aromatherapy beads to melt. I almost started a fire. Did I mention that I'm a moron sometimes?

But anyway, the clock still works, and the gradual brightening feature is nice. When the beeping starts, I treat it like any other alarm clock, which is to say, I hit the snooze button repeatedly over the next hour or two.

The second alarm clock is on the other side of the room. It's a cheapo clock radio and I have it set to NPR in the morning. (Sometimes NPR infiltrates the dreams I'm having right before I wake up. That can be pretty bizarre.) When that clock goes off, I get up, hit the snooze button, and climb back into bed.

Between the two clocks, I usually manage to wake up. Eventually.

I have never been a morning person. I am at my best after 11:00 p.m., and it is not too difficult for me to stay up to 3:00 a.m. I usually have to force myself to stop what I'm doing at around 1:00 a.m. and start preparing for bedtime.

Mind you, I would like to be a morning person. People who wake up and go into work early are perceived to be motivated and hardworking. People who come in to work late are seen to be lazy, no matter how late they stay into the evening. Granted, I don't particularly mind the "lazy" tag. I OWN IT, BABY.

Actually, I would like to be a morning person who ALSO has the ability to stay up late partying. I don't want to turn into a pumpkin at 10:00 p.m. just when all the drunken craziness starts to happen. That would be one of those Signs That You're Getting Old, and I'm avoiding those as best I can.

When I was a senior in high school, there was a period of time when both of my parents were out of town, and I was in the house by myself. I overslept on a school day, because I didn't have my mom to make sure I didn't sleep through my alarm. So I called my school, and said in my best fake low voice: "Hi, uh, I'm [name of my dad]... I'd like to excuse my son from school today."

There was a pause, and then the lady at the other end of the line said, "I don't think I'm talking to an adult."

I said, "Oh, okay. Good-bye." That was all I could come up with. Brilliant! Just imagine, it didn't work!

So I had an unexcused absence on my record. Approximately a week later, the phone rang in the evening, and I picked up. It was an automated message from the school saying that I had missed a day of school. I listened to it, said "uh huh" every now and then, as if it were a telemarketer, then I said, "No thanks, we're not interested." I hung up, my parents never knew, and that was the end of that whole incident.

I guess my school wasn't much smarter than I was, after all.

Permalink 5 Comment

Posted by Ken in: life

Comments

Comment #1 from Jenn (Guest)
2005 Mar 10 - 1:13 am : #

My husband works second shift, and since my job lets me work at home, I work second shift too. Oh my GOD, it's great. I can only imagine what life would be life if I not only worked in a real office, but I had to drag myself there to be at work at 8 AM. Another fun thing about second shift is that you can be out parading around all day, and you sort of feel like you're playing hooky.

I have an alarm clock that makes nature-y sounds, and the alarm sound for the ocean setting is a foghorn. It's only slightly less jarring than the beeping. Have you ever been in a public place and you heard something make a noise similar to your alarm clock? I was in Arby's once a long time ago and the fry machine beeped, I almost peed my pants.

Comment #2 from Steve (Guest)
2005 Mar 10 - 6:28 am : #

It's 6:15am and I've been up for more than an hour. I LOVE getting up early. Things are so quiet, and there's no other people buggin ya. And, by the time lunch rolls around, I've already done as much stuff as most people acomplish by 3 or 4pm. I feel so superior!! (actually, most of that is lies, but I do like getting up early)

Comment #3 from Jen (Guest)
2005 Mar 10 - 8:34 am : #

I'm a night person by nature. I prefer to go to bed around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and get up around noon. When I was working on my dissertation, I routinely worked until the damned birds started chirping (around 6:00am). They pissed me off every time, because that's when I wanted to go to sleep and they WOULDN'T SHUT UP!

Anyway, having a child changed everything, they say. It is 8:23am and I've already been up for an hour and a half. Unfortunately, I've been unable to shift my bedtime significantly, so I'm just generally tired. *shrug* I'm a mom, what do I expect?

Comment #4 from MonoCerdo (Guest)
2005 Mar 10 - 10:33 am : #

Oh how I loathe to be awakened by anything other than a nice mechanical bleat. My mother's sweet voice? Too chipper. Radio? Music or talk, annoys the hell out of me. Nature sounds? Die die birdie.

Perhaps it's precisely because I'm not a morning person and I'm already grouchy to begin with, but I honestly would prefer a wake-up slap to a gentle shake. Match my anger with yours or I'll just try to bring you down with me.

Comment #5 from Crouching Hamster (Guest)
2005 Mar 10 - 6:57 pm : #

Steve,
Up at 6:15? How do you do this? When I get up at 8:30, I am so groggy I sometimes can't even remember turning off my alarm clock - which is across the room.

You must go to be before 1. For me, the night life is just beginning at 10.

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