This morning I set my alarm for 5:30 AM because I needed to be up by 6 AM, and I usually demand at least a half hour to hit snooze. I know this behavior would drive some people nuts, and this could be one of the (many, many) reasons Jon has lost so much hair since we’ve been together. Other reasons? Genes, a dog who eats her own poop, that certain way I scream his name in a frustrated, Southern tone from the opposite side of the house. A few weeks ago when I published our instructional video on how to make edamame, one in which I call out his name several times, he forbid me from playing it on my laptop when he was not in the room because the sound of his name being yelled out like that made him wince. He’d hear the video from the other room and go, oh God, here she comes. As if I was going to round the corner, shoot him a nasty glare and declare that yet again he’d done something wrong. To be fair, he has usually done something wrong.
I can’t even explain it myself, this compulsion to hit the snooze button multiple times, because when I hear Leta crying I can jump right up and be alert. But when I’m answering to an alarm my body involuntarily wants to negotiate with that alarm, and I’m not proud of this, but I once hit snooze for over two hours. When we lived in Los Angeles I had this tiny portable alarm that I would seize off the nightstand when it initially beeped and then hug it to my bosom. We’d sleep there together, the alarm and I, in that embrace for the next nine minutes until it beeped again, except I was usually quick enough that I could snooze it mid-beep. One, to cause as little disruption to Jon’s sleeping as possible. And two, it was my was of going, you know what, alarm? Shut up. I KNOW.
And that little dance would continue for forty-five minutes or until Jon turned over, ripped it out of my hands and threw it against the wall. Whichever came first.
Now my alarm is my iPhone, and in order to snooze that thing you have to be awake enough to hit the button on the interface just right or it won’t go off. There’s no just slamming your hand against the top of a clock. You actually have to open your eyes, find the button, and hold your hand in a way that your finger triggers the mechanism in the machine. Which makes it a little more difficult to fall right back asleep, and I guess that’s a good thing? Good for Jon, but I kind of miss those delicious nine minute naps. I mean, is there really any other feeling as good as the one you get when you know you don’t have to get up right that second? NO THERE ISN’T. You could make the argument that sex is better, but then I’d point out that the snooze button is just as much of a button as the clitoris, AND THAT IS NO COINCIDENCE. When God made alarms he knew what he was doing.