Noises in the Night

In the dark I slowly cracked one eyelid open. I’d heard an odd noise. Was I dreaming? No. It was real. It was a loud hum. Our fridge? I peeked out the window to see if our neighbor was using power tools before sunrise. He is doing an overhaul on the house. But in the dark? Nope, nothing outside. Groggily, I zombie-walked out of the room to investigate.

Soon I found my answer. The noise was coming from our son’s room. I picked my way into the room, wary of nighttime perils in the form of Legos on the floor. Several inches from his motionless head, an alarm clock was trying in vain to wake him. It is a clock radio but it was not playing music. It had an odd buzzy racket coming from it, the noise you hear when a radio is not picking up a station clearly. Fumbling in the darkened room, I tried to figure out which switch on the back turned the alarm off.  Eventually I found the correct switch. The motionless lump in the bed remained completely unaffected by the irritating alarm static. I considered the irony of the tired parent two rooms away hearing the alarm while the child lying less than a foot away from the alarm slept dreamily. The point of getting him the alarm clock is so that I don’t have to work so hard to wake him each morning. The point of getting him the alarm clock was not to wake me up—without waking him up—an hour earlier than necessary!

The clock radio had a glowing red 6:30 on it. It was still on Daylight Savings Time. The new time (as of yesterday) was 5:30a.m. For a moment I indulged in righteous indignation: this is the first weekday I can enjoy getting another hour of sleep, a perk of returning to Standard Time. I was not supposed to be woken in the dark by a confused alarm clock. I deserved my extra hour of sleep! Pouting, I grouchily shuffled back to bed and curled up in the warmth. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to settle my body into a wonderful dream about elves creeping into my house and dividing the laundry pile into five piles, which then would be whisked into the correct rooms. I burrowed under the covers, allowing my body to relax…

I shifted. Then I kicked covers off, too warm already. I rolled over and got into the position which gets me back to sleep 95% of the time. And I waited. A few minutes later I opened my eyes. It was no use. There would be no further sleep for me this morning. No fair! On principle alone I want this hour back! Oh, I’ll survive…There are far worse injustices in the world. I hope all of you out there relished that extra hour of sleep. Now who can I see about a voucher for the extra hour of sleep I was hoping to enjoy?

Alternate titles considered for this post:

1)      Sleep Study

2)      How You Know Your Child is a Deep Sleeper

3)      Why I Found Myself Blogging Before 6 a.m.