Taking A Stand: My deep sleep too much for alarms
Now that football season is pretty well over, I’m going to have to find another alarm clock to wake me up on Sunday mornings.
As some of you may know, I’m not a morning person. It’s a very rare occasion in which I roll out of bed before 9 a.m. Sure, my eyes may open a little after 7, just long enough to see the clock, but it seems I always drift back off for what is the best two or three hours sleep imaginable.
Of course, these sacred couple of hours in the mid-morning have their price, seeing once I do “rise and shine” I’m in a constant state of rush since I’m running behind. As a matter of fact, I can’t remember a morning when I’ve been able to take my time getting ready for work or church.
It’s always a fire drill for me in the mornings. I haven’t eaten breakfast in years and generally, my clothes tend to clash when I dress myself in such a hurry. If you see me and I look like I just rolled out of bed, well, that’s because I probably have.
The breakdown likely begins the night before since there’s no way I can get to sleep much before 1 or 2 a.m. Sure, I can lie down at 11 p.m., but I’m just wasting my time since I’ll lie there until the early morning hours. Meanwhile, if I go to bed at 1 or so, I’ll go right to sleep.
The problem is doubly bad on Sunday mornings since there’s some preparation that goes into getting to church and looking halfway presentable. Plus, I have a 5-year-old rug rat who fights getting ready for church every step of the way and is devising new ways to slow me down even further.
Prior to the end of football season, I had my own personal alarm clock so to speak. Being the commissioner of a football fantasy league, I had to field calls from teams turning in line-ups. The calls would begin before 9 a.m. and get me up and out of bed. Therefore, there was no real problem getting up and around early.
With the end of football season came the end of the morning calls. My mother, knowing I have sleep issues, calls me at 9 a.m. on Sundays. In the old days this would get me somewhat out of bed; however, a new twist has come into play. Jack is now able to answer the phone so, over recent weeks, he’s begun fielding the calls from my mom like a little secretary, bringing the phone upstairs to me in bed.
This is fine as a convenience factor since he’s up long before me. However, it defeats the purpose the call is intended for. He might as well bring me breakfast in bed and tell me to roll over for a few more winks because that’s what happens.
Further compounding the problem is Jack’s reluctance to get around on Sunday mornings. This Sunday, for instance, he argued with me for 15 minutes that it was not actually Sunday, claiming instead that dear old dad had his days mixed up and it was Saturday. Added to this is the unexplainable phenomenon where he totally forgets how to dress himself on Sunday morning, making me act as his personal butler.
It’s not hard to figure out his motivation. It’s not so much he doesn’t want to go to church as it is he likes having the house to roam while dad is asleep. If it were up to him, I’m sure he’d pop me a sleeping pill and go back to dining on candy and watching cartoons.
Someday, maybe someone will invent something to remedy my situation. Perhaps something along the vein of a clock which has a loud alarm on it which sounds at an appointed time. But more importantly, this invention must not have a feature on it that says “snooze” since sleepy people have a knack of hitting the snooze button with one swoop even when they are still asleep.
Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].