It's a sunrise alarm clock. It's a monstrously large thing; fills the headboard front to back (Thimble does the same thing) and is about 12 to 16 inches long. It wakes me up with gradually increasing light instead of a harsh sudden noise.
I like sunrise alarm clocks. I didn't realize until I didn't wake up to it, but instead woke up to the backup alarm on my phone (which is a harsh sudden beeping noise), that the light waking me up kept me from waking straight out of a bad dream.
And boy I was cranky. Thimble was not altogether pleased with how cranky I was that morning. It took till late that afternoon before I realized what must have happened. I tried to increase the light manually and nothing.
So, whatever, needs a new light bulb. It's only the second one in more than a decade after all. I put a new light bulb in (it just used normal candelabra bulbs, but had a reflector plus the shape of the "lampshade" to increase the light to the maximum of the full-bright "end" of the alarm). Yeah, new bulb not working.
Um. Phooey. Already proved that waking up without it was a bad idea. I reluctantly went on Amazon and looked up sunrise alarm clocks. Reluctantly because this one had cost about $150 back in the day and I was sure that a new one wasn't going to be much cheaper. It wasn't. It was $130. Ouch. But, the reason why it was less expensive is because it had competition. Back when I bought it, it was the only manufacturer making such a clock and they were kind of rare. Like noise-canceling headphones were originally.
I looked up the competitors, and one that looked like it would work was only about $40. If I hadn't had the other one, I don't know that I would have gotten this one. The old one had a 15 or 30 minute wake up "light getting brighter" time. This one has a 30 minute only time. But I already knew 30 minutes worked best for me. Some other stuff like that, too, but since I had the experience with the old one and its more modifiable features, I knew what worked best, and this new one had it.
 |
| Thimble, the new alarm clock, and the old one behind it. |
It also had a much smaller footprint, which was attractive to me, as the old one took up so much space on the headboard that Thimble (who prefers the headboard at night) was actually very restricted in where he could be. He had plenty of space as long as he was in the exact same space every time!
It was also less heavy than the old one. I didn't even think about this.
Thimble had observed that if I woke up late on a Saturday, I was very cranky and no fun to be around. Thimble had observed that the alarm clock was what woke me up.
The next Saturday (the 15th) I only had the clock a few days (shipping and everything does take time, you know) and I was still messing it up. The light activated as it was supposed to but I was exhausted and didn't want to get up and at the end, it's supposed to make a noise to let me know "okay, the light's as bright as it's going to get, time to get up now." It didn't.
So I was making all the motions (or lack thereof) that would indicate to Thimble that I was going back to sleep.
Let me stress I was not in a location where my head was directly under the alarm clock.
This meant that Thimble (bless him) had to have pulled the clock along the surface of the headboard until it was over my head, and then pushed it off so it hit me on the head.
Well, it worked. I woke up. Unfortunately I still couldn't get out of bed because I don't want to reinforce that behavior!
I woke up, moved the alarm clock off my face a little puzzled, and looked up into Thimble's concerned square face looking down at me. "Did it work? Are you up?"
No comments:
Post a Comment