I Blame the Chinese

Every second Monday, Louise has the day off because of hours she has made up over the past nine days. It is a pretty good deal, a long weekend every other week and on the odd occasion an extra long weekend when a “real” long weekend falls on her day off. Needless to say, she enjoys sleeping in n those days if at all possible.

Yesterday was one of those rare days that I had to get up early and she could sleep in. I am always cognisant of how important those days are for her and yesterday I set the alarm for 5:45 AM and set my internal alarm for 5:40 AM. The internal clock doesn’t have speakers so it is easy for your sleep partner to keep sleeping. Generally speaking, my internal clock is pretty effective, almost too effective. Yesterday it started to wake me at about 3:30 and every ten to fifteen minutes for the next two hours and ten minutes.

I got out of bed at 5:40 and turned the clocks alarm off so that Louise could keep dreaming while I got dressed and left for work. I didn’t hear any complaints, so I imagine I was successful and she got some much needed rest. I was tired, but since afternoon naps are sometimes even better than night sleep, I was good to go.

Since Louise had to work today, I had no need to set my internal alarm clock and could once again rely on our marvellous timepiece made in China. We have never had any trouble with this clock in all of the years we have used it, day in and day out it has performed splendidly. Well, until this morning…

Yesterday, when my internal alarm got me out of bed I turned that Chinese technical marvel off and forgot that it was off. Internal alarms are fine and good for the days that you set them, but unlike our Chinese clock it doesn’t stay set day after day. I suspect that in some corner of my brain there was a little voice telling my dream self that I had forgotten something. My dream brain more than likely thought that the forgotten thing was the winning lotto numbers the universe finally sent me. I have been waiting a very long time for those numbers. I am sure sluggy dream brain waded through the wisps of ideas and demons that lurk in the night time shadows of my brain to remember that the alarm was never turned back on.

Of course the link between sleep brain and waking body is tenuous at best. Eventually, my eyes opened up and managed to focus on the large, glowing numbers on the face of our clock. It was only about 45 minutes later than normal, but those are an action packed 45 minutes. I told Louise that we slept in and both of us levitated off the mattress and sped to perform our morning ablutions. I felt somewhat responsible for not setting the clock, since I didn’t set the clock, but to be fair Louise knows I am something of an airhead and should have checked the clock herself.

We both managed to get to work and even though we were a little late, to my knowledge the sun will rise tomorrow, babies will cry, the earth will spin and our Chinese clock (now reset) will continue to do what it was designed for. Waking people up who don’t really want to wake up at all. I blame the Chinese.