ALARMED!

ZZZZZ....  huh? . . . . ZZZZZZ . . .  huh? . . . . ZZZZZZ . . . . Ugh. . .

What's your morning wake up like?  Do you hit the snooze button?  Maybe you're too cool for an alarm clock. Maybe you just open your eyes, hop out of bed, and start your day without being late.

That description doesn't fit me at all. I set two alarm clocks every night.  I'm not talking about just turning two alarms on each night.  I change the times on each one every day.  Sometimes by only ten minutes.  While I'm setting my two clocks I also verify that they are set for different times, usually three or four minutes apart.  If you have a hard time getting up in the morning feel free to use all my time tested strategies.  Did I mention one clock is set with the real time and one is set roughly ten minutes fast?

So my two alarm clocks are set.  One is across the room on a dresser and the other is on the bedside table.

Somewhere around 5:00am (+/- twenty minutes) the first alarm will sound.  I promptly hit snooze and go back to sleep.  For three minutes.  When the second alarm goes off I promptly hit snooze and go back to sleep.  For seven minutes.  By the way, that's a sweet seven minutes!  Keep in mind that one of the alarms caused me to get out of bed, walk a few steps, pound the buttons on top of the alarm until the sound stopped, stumble back into bed, and snuggle up in the blankets.

This process will repeat for two to three cycles.  Sometimes I don't hit snooze for a few minutes on one or both clocks and the alarms will get within one minute of each other.  It's really annoying when you hit snooze, close your eyes, and then another alarm jolts you before you even get comfortable!  What kind of snooze lasts less than a minute?  This one minute spacing also happens with poor planning during the alarm setting phase.

As I get closer to actually getting out of bed I will turn off an alarm instead of hitting snooze and then go back to bed and wait for the second alarm to sound so that I can turn it off as well.  Yeah, I am very aware that I could turn it off without waiting for it, but that's not what I do.

Once both alarm clocks are off I'm up and ready to go.  Unfortunately for Cari, she too, is usually awake at this point.  She doesn't need an alarm clock. How many do you use?