Just a little background necessary to understanding this story: Stiffy has an alarm clock that she got as a freebie at the grand opening of the giftshop at the Ohio Statehouse. It's got two buttons, 50 million settings, no instructions, and it plays the happy birthday song at random times on random days; in short, it's a piece of junk (or a P.O.J. as Scott would say). Steph also happens to take after dear brother Jeff in that it takes five alarm clocks and an ice water bath dumped over her head to wake her in the morning (if you doubt that Jeff could be just as bad, talk to Ricky Hardison).
So, Wednesday morning I awoke to the sound of a cheap, electric, noisy, rendition of "happy birthday". I sat up groggily, and the vague thought that something wasn't quite right passed through my mind - even in my sleep-drunken state I was pretty sure I had set the other alarm. I expected Stiffy to sit up and shut it off....and kept expecting it for another minute and a half, but there still wasn't any movement from the other bed. When she heard me sit back up, Stiffy sat up, looked at me, and then fell asleep again. I was pretty irritated by this time - you would be too if you'd been listening to an alarm clock play "happy birthday" for a minute and a half straight at who knows what ungodly hour - and I asked (in a very cross tone of voice) "aren't you going to shut that thing off?".
"Oh, yeah." She shut it off and promptly went back to sleep. I thought it looked pretty dark, even for a winter morning, and realized why when I looked at my clock that read 12:58.
Fast forward to last night - Steph was sleeping over at a friends house for a birthday celebration and I was thinking of how wonderful it would be to get a good night's rest without a little voice asking things like, "hey Abby, what if I always laughed like that girl on Oklahoma? what would you do?" or "do you think my new paper doll looks like more like a Suzanna or a Rose?" Very interesting questions to contemplate I admit, but not when I'm trying to sleep. I even took the precaution of a little cursory search of the room for that surprise clock (the one Stiffy said she was going to throw away that afternoon).
I had a wonderful night's rest, for about two hours, when I woke to the strains of "happy birthday" coming from somewhere in my room. I was past the point of irritation and had moved into the 'contemplating murder' stage when I finally found the beastly little clock under Stiffy's bed. This morning (with a good two hours less sleep than I would have had otherwise) I took the matter into my own hands.
3 comments:
Oh how you make me laugh Abby! Although it is hard for me and Brian to wake up in the mornings. We set two alarms on Sundays and are still usually late! Sundays also seem to be the only day of the week that our kids sleep in late...so that doesn't help us get out the door either! :) ~Meredith
oh, the days of TRYING not to over-sleep and needing 5 alarms and an ice bath. i used to have a HUGE garfield alarm clock that sat ACROSS the room from me (on purpose). i also had a regular digital alarm clock that played the radio when it went off. one night/morning my brother had a friend sleeping over and my radio alarm clock woke them up (but not me!). my brother decided to call the radio station that was playing and have them tell me to wake up and shut off my alarm clock. it worked...that morning.
Well, it had it coming to it, right?
:D
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