I’m pretty sure we’ve done this before, but I feel that it’s time for a reprise. The question is in the thread title, what wakes you up every morning?
For me, on days where I have to be up before 7:30-8:00 AM, it is (and has been for years) a cell phone alarm that plays “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” by Cage the Elephant. It just seems appropriate. On days where I don’t have to be up early, the sun shining through the bedroom windows wakes me. Also appropriate, me thinks.
Et tu?
The default alarm on my Samsung phone.
Dread.
I wake up to dread.
Either one cat kneading on my stomach, or another one sinking his claws into my nostril. Sometimes the unmistakable sound of a hairball coming up.
I wake up around 4 AM with no assistance, generally with an erection and an insistent need to urinate.
Most days I just wake up slightly before the alarm goes off. The alarm is default on my pixel phone.
But lately, the dog has been telling me to get up at 5:30 by standing next to the bed and doing a really soft “Grrrr”. The same noise he makes when he’s gotten his toy stuck under furniture. He’s getting old and I think he needs to pee.
Existential angst, the cold grip of fear, and a deadening depression. It’s quite the emotional cocktail.
More often than not, it’s the querulous shriek of Dr. Bladder.
Mon - Fri I get up around 5:30. I have my iPhone set on the Bedtime function. The wake-up sound I use is called Sunny. But 90% of the time I wake up before the alarm goes off. Weekends I get up whenever I wake up - usually because I have to pee.
I have no schedule, so I sleep whenever I want, and wake up whenever I want. Sometimes it’s my bladder, sometimes the cat hocking up a hair ball, sometimes birds outside the window. Or my husband, initiating some gentle love-making.
Currently, it’s “Oxford Comma” from Vampire Weekend. Other days (depending on the wake time) it’s “Freaky Hijiki” from the Beastie Boys. I change it often. I look for something with a good* opening, b/c I’m really only going to hear the first 30 seconds or less.
However, last week I substituted “Nights on Broadway” from those BeeGees. I did it because I had instilled that tune as an (annoying) earworm to my wife a few nights prior. It got a good chuckle from her that morning… she may have still been asleep as she uttered the chuckle… good stuff! I’ll recycle that one in a few weeks when (she thinks) she’s forgotten about it.
Others on the list are “Honeybody” from Kishi Bashi and “Black on a White Ground” from Janko Nilovic. But the longest-lived tune in my alarm rotation is “Confessions” from BADBADNOTGOOD.
*effective without being arresting.
Nothing. I haven’t had to listen to an alarm in the last 25 years. I’m awake at 4:30am whether I have to go to work that day or not.
Most mornings I wake up on my own somewhere between one and 10 minutes before my alarm goes off. If it does go off, it’s a hideous beep-shriek from my 25 year old GE alarm clock that I can’t sleep through, no matter how hard I may want to.
Bladder, almost always.
When I’m waking up at 5 am for work it’s the Tomorrow ringtone from Samsung. On the days I’m sleeping in its either a whining dog, a three year old wanting attention, my bladder or just my natural time to wake up.
This at full volume. I usually wake up before it hits out of sheer self-defense.
Turn your speakers down before playing.
Either sunlight or the cat meowing for her breakfast. Gotta love retirement.
Roughly 50% of the time I wake up to kicks/slaps. See, if I am sleeping on my right side I hear my phone alarm even though my hearing aid isn’t in my left ear. But if I am sleeping on my left side, my right ear (close to 100% loss) hears nothing and my gf slaps/kicks me reflexively so that I will wake up and hit snooze. She likes 2 snoozes each morning.
My clock radio is set to the DC NPR station. Reception is iffy where we live, but at a minimum, there’s static to disturb my slumber. More often than not, tho, I wake before it goes off.
The best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup.
Just kidding, I’m not a coffee drinker.