Mildly Alarmed

Every morning I find myself locked in a battle of wits...with my alarm clock. Every weekday it goes off at the same time--4:56 am. And I think its become tired of the same routine and is now mocking me. I need to be up at this "ungodly hour" so I can leave the house at 5:15 in order to be at the gym at 5:30. The original game plan looked something like this:

1. Alarm goes off at 4:56. Push snooze button once.
2. Alarm goes off again at 5:03. Get up.

Its a beautiful plan when it works. But that's the problem--my alarm clock is playing tricks on me.

Oh, it goes off at 4:56 like its supposed to. But when I hit the snooze button, it decides to pout and somehow lower the volume on the music. So the second alarm sounding often goes unheard for 2 or 3 minutes until my subconscious realizes the student talking to me in my dream shouldn't be rapidly explaining the weather forecast for the week.

To combat this web of lies propagated by my Clock Radio, I changed the radio station to something my ears would revolt against immediately--'gangsta rap'...or something like that. I just kept turning the tuning knob until something truly awful met my ears. "Done!" I thought naively. "There's no way I can sleep through that!" But my alarm clock must know me better than I know myself. Rather than waking up and getting out of bed when my ears are met by the strong beat of "You a bad broad!", my hand instead shoots out with cat-like quickness and slams down the snooze button with amazing skill and precision (especially considering the hour) and I don't even really wake up. This can happen two or three times before I consciously realize it is now 5:20 and I will be late, once again, to the gym.

I'm honestly worried about the success this little 2-alarm clock radio is having with its Jedi mind tricks. Sometimes I'll hit the snooze button the first time--consciously--and from somewhere in the great void thoughts will begin to appear in my head. Thoughts that rationalize a late arrival at the gym...or no arrival at all. Thoughts along the lines of, "All you have to do this morning is some weight training. You only need 30 minutes for that. Hit the snooze button at least one more time." Or "You were up really late last night. You'd better make this your day off for the week." Its creepy...

I believe I'm about to wave the white flag of surrender and change the wake-up time. A little change from 4:56 am to 5:03 am should satisfy my clock radio dictator. Besides, I'm afraid of what it might decide to revolt against next. It knows where I sleep after all...