I sometimes leave my alarm on at weekends, just for that immense, dreamed-of-the-whole-working-week pleasure of being able to switch it off and go back to sleep. A lie-in is no fun if you’re not aware of it
Having said that, I don’t have to get up particularly early. About 7.40 - although I often hit the snooze button several times and don’t crawl out of my pit until half an hour after that. And I only work four days a week, too.
The downside is that I often don’t get to bed until 2am on the days that I do work.
The alarm got me up right on time this morning. Of course, I did wake up at least three times during the night to double check everything was in working order. I think it’s time to give in and buy a new alarm clock, in hopes this will settle whatever’s off with my sleep patterns. All the suggestions are great so far…a vibrating bed? That’ll give quite a kick to my dreams…
I was recently dumped by a whirlwind fling (I guess) partner. When she started hanging out a lot at my place about three weeks ago, we set an alarm one night for 1 AM. Or I set an alarm, anyway. She said, “What, you’re not planning on falling asleep, are you?” (She was supposed to go home to her boyfriend around that time–we hadn’t started dating yet.) I said “No, of course not, but we’re tired, and we’re lying around in my room and we may fall asleep.”
Fall asleep we did.
My alarm, which is LOUD like a motherfucker, surely went off at 1 AM. Its MO is that it starts off quiet, then gets louder and louder and louder and louder and louder until you turn it off. Well, it just kept getting louder, to the point where it was waking up neighbors. Neighbors started pouring on our doorstep (I learned later) to bitch to my roommate about it, and he apparently knocked VIOLENTLY on my door to wake us up–for a good long while–to no avail. Finally he had to cut the power to my room to get the alarm to turn off. We woke up at 11 or something the next morning to find that we had not only slept, but slept through my alarm, and by the way the numbers were blinking on my clock. My roommate told me the story later.
Do you have a cat? Mine was stepping on the clock and turning it off. I finally had to perch a box lid on top of it so that she couldn’t do that anymore. Then for months I’ve had a pile of mail sitting there, and she couldn’t get to the clock at all. Three days ago I cleaned up the nightstand, and she started stepping on the clock again, so I had to dig the box lid back out.
I wish there were some kind of an alarm clock that wouldn’t ring or buzz or beep, but would make you answer five or ten simple questions to make sure your brain was fully awake, in remembering and problem-solving mode, not “Oh! So sleepy!” mode.
“What is 17 plus 12?”
“When is your mother’s birthday?”
“What is the name of the current President?”
And so on. I saw something once that said, if you need an alarm clock to wake up, you’re not getting enough sleep! Your body will naturally wake when it is rested. The trick for most people is to go to bed earlier.
But I still use an alarm clock, myself. And it’s sad how often I can sleep through the alarm (it will stop after 90 seconds).
