Until I left for college, I never started my day via alarm clock. My sweet mother believed that as long as we were at home, a gentle voice urging you awake was a better way to start your day then "Engh! Engh! Engh! Engh!" Oh, sure, there were a few times when this wasn't possible...when I had an early shift at work for starters, or a round of cramming to complete—but just needed that three hours of sleep first.
My bedroom shares a wall with my parents'. I always slapped the screeching box off in the first 2 or 3 enghs because I was constantly worried that I would awaken them. In college, I hit it before the first engh faded. I had a roommate to think of, after all. I trained myself to wake up quickly to that sound, and often jackknifed up in my lofted bed, hitting the ceiling and bruising my head. I'm sure that if I ever try to beat the coffee habit again, which will be no time soon, I will loft my bed or lower the ceiling and try this method of starting my day...it has got to be better than the withdrawal.
Enter in Miles, who is no novice to the alarm clock. Behold a man who does not experience an adrenaline rush when that rude contraption sounds. He does not display the proper reverence. He, like me, does not wake up to radio. Radio would just lull me to sleep, or fail to wake me in the first place. Just my luck, the one time I would wake up, it would be to a catchy tune that I hate, say "Who Let the Dogs Out", and have it in my head the whole day.
In typical lackadaisical Miles fashion, he lumbers to the alarm clock and hits the snooze button. Nine minutes later he hits it again. The cycle repeats four times, minimum, and it took mere days of cohabitation to realize that my opinion of him as a slacker affected him not. This is how Miles greets the day: inch by inch until he's craftily pushed through the task at hand so slowly that one is left to wonder when the heck he made the transition. If you think about it, Miles sort of takes the snooze button approach to all of his daily tasks. It's probably good medicine for an obsessive compulsive to live with such a languid fellow...that is, when my blood pressure isn't soaring from irritation.
Now, after the period of false niceties has finished in our relationship, as it does in all relationships, and has been for the past two-something years, we are once again reverting to the people that we really are. You kind of bend yourselves to one another there in the beginning...eventually a person gets achy and needs to snap back. In the latest issue, we see that I have scorned my night owl post, while Miles is left to burn the midnight oil. Innately, I love morning time, as does my father before me.
I love everything about being up early. I feel as though my day has less wasteful time with this schedule. This is not my husband's preference, and I respect that. So, I am a basket case by nine or ten at night, looking stoned with eyelids waving at half-mast and making no sense at all. Case in point: a few weeks ago when we returned late from a night at my folks' just before labor day, and Miles said, "Wow. Do you realize we watched two-and-a-half Tom Hanks movies on TBS today?" My first thought was to dispute him with, But Meg Ryan isn't in Forrest Gump, Hon. Fortunately, I talked myself out of responding aloud and saved a little dignity.
I set the alarm for five and spring from the bed to turn it off. It is on Miles' side. The last two mornings, I've had a hiccup, a sort of semi-reversion that I can likely chalk up to my time with Miles. There is a clash of my two lives as I slide the alarm off with force after the second engh. Then, from the little voice in my head, "Snooze! Snooze! You don't know how to do it you stupid, slow-witted idiot." So I press the snooze button, belatedly realizing that it won't work with the alarm clock disengaged. I find the alarm set button by the light of the pitch black room, set the alarm time for 5:05, and engage it once more. I walk back to bed with a mind alert from this dexterous work. My head nestles in the indentation of the pillow, pointed clock-ward. My eyelids are locked open, watching the red glow of the time. I do not sleep; I am wide awake. At 5:03, I kill the alarm and start my day. The internal struggle to break free of Miles' slumberous influence rages on.
