Monday, September 2, 2013

The Lying Clock

When Charlie woke me up in the dark of the morning this morning, I automatically looked at the clock. It was blinking, indicating a power outage at some point in the night. But this particular clock doesn´t blink 12:00 over and over, like some clocks do. It will still change every minute. When I woke up, it was blinking 3:48 a.m.

I watched the time progress on the blinking clock as Charlie worked on putting himself back to sleep. I watched the minutes blink by as I listened to the thunderstorm outside that illuminated our bedroom with flashes of lightning.

Finally, when the clock was blinking 4:48 and I was still not asleep, I decided to give up and get up. I got dressed in the dark (a skill I have perfected since having children--thanks, kids!) and crept downstairs. When I turned on the light in the bathroom, I saw that my watch said 4:20 a.m.

Aw, hell.

So here I am, up dark and early. I will really regret this around three this afternoon, but at least I get to have my coffee without interruption. And at 4:30 in the morning, I´m going to need a lot of it.

Happy Labor Day, my fellow Americans! Here´s hoping you slept later than I did.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good thing A is grilling today...hopefully.
Happy Labor Day. Beth

flask said...

as a retired person without kids or spouse, i have to confess that the time i wake up in the morning is whatever time i wake up in the morning.

this morning that time was 5:08.

...i think. my bedside clock has a working alarm AND it reads the correct time (i assume in the dark) but the part of it that lights up recently stopped working, so although my clock habitually tells the truth, i can onnly get information out of it during daylight hours, which is not handy at oh-dark-thirty when i am lying there wondering if it's late enough to get up, or if i should maybe try to sleep another few hours.

i am very sorry about your missed sleep opportunity.

tu mere said...

Why is it that our obviously tired bodies can't override our totally irrational and time insensitive active minds. You'd think that would have been an evolutionary must.

The whole holiday hype is overrated but, hey, love the visual of the midnight storm. The whole snuggled in bed thing but, then again, didn't really work out for you, did it. Sorry!