The War Against the Alarm Clock

                                        
You must know by now that there is nothing that I love more than sleep. I adore it. I need it and I never get enough of it. The mornings are so hard. Every morning when the alarm rings I'm like:

I die a little bit inside every time I wake up in the morning (which is a very ironic statement). My eight year old gets up at 5 am and every night when I set the alarm for 5 it makes me sad. The alarm goes off at 5 and it is one of our responsibilities to make sure our daughter gets out of bed. She needs a little oomph in the morning. 

Does she really need to get up at 5? No way. She could easily get up at 6 but if you wake her up after 5 she will scream and get upset and tell you she is late for school. She makes us crazy. So one of us gets her up and hits snooze. Then we continue to hit snooze until 6 o'clock. That means we have to hit the snooze button 6 times before we get up for the day. The alarm clock is across the room, so we are actually forced to get up because we had a problem with just turning the clock off completely and going back to sleep. 

So that is the routine every morning. The other day, I revolted. The first beep went off and I woke up my daughter and hit snooze. The second time, I let it beep a few times and then got up and hit snooze. The third time I decided I wasn't getting up. It was my husband's turn. When it went off for the fourth time I decided that I would just wait very still and pretend to be sleeping so that my husband would have to get up and hit the snooze button. Except he didn't. He was playing the same game I was. We were both, laying awake, completely still trying to fool the other one into thinking we were dead asleep to avoid having to get up to hit snooze. I counted the alarm clock beeps. It beeped 76 times before I nudged my husband. "It's your turn." It was the longest 76 seconds of my life. It is the worst sound ever. It's horrible. I hate it. When I travel out of town I have a special song that plays to my alarm and when I am out in public and someone has that sound as a ring tone, I have an instinctual urge to sob and throw things.

I purchased the alarm clock when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. I remember it specifically because it was kind of high tech back in the olden days of 2003 and have a large display and you can make a recording and set it as your alarm. I need to do that. I am going to start recording disparaging things and so that I get guilty and get out of bed. I can say things like, "Get your fat a** out of bed." I don't want to do a recording of myself though out of fear that I will grow to hate the sound of my own voice and I will have to become mute so I don't sob and throw things when I hear it. 

Someone help me.