Normal Clock

Years ago, I bought quite the snazzy clock from Hammacher Schlemmer. (sp?) It plays CD's, makes sounds of nature, has adjustable brightness, and will wake you with your choice of church chimes, alarm, radio, or CD. If you choose to go to sleep with sounds of nature going on, they get quieter and quieter as the time begins to run out. There are 25 choices for the sounds of nature. My own personal favorites are Summer Night (complete with crickets) and Wind Chimes.

The thing is, earlier this year, the snazzy clock became completely unreliable. Sometimes it would remember to wake me up, sometimes it would not. It's the set-and-forget kind of clock, so it was not a matter of my having forgotten to set it -- IT forgot to wake me up.

With all these bells & whistles, the one main quality an alarm clock really needs is reliability. It really needs to remember to wake you up.

KNOWING I would take quite a deal of **** from DH, I began to study clocks online to make another purchase. Target has a whole line of Westclox retro clocks that are quite dandy to the eye. I studied them over a few weeks and was finally ready to make my purchase. Here is the one I selected:

Before ordering it from Target, I ran one of the comparison shoppers and was surprised to find it was actually cheaper -- quite a bit -- from LL Bean. So I ordered it from them.

The clock arrived early this week. Needless to say, the very night I plugged it up, DH noticed it, eagle eye that he is, and was quick to say, "What kind of sounds does this clock make?"

Being somewhat defensive, well, pretty darn defensive, about the whole gadget thing, I retorted that it's just a normal clock, thank you, and it rings.

This was a teensy lie. The clock is called the "Moonbeam" because it wakes you with a flashing light and if you don't go on and get up, it finally resorts to a bell. Supposedly the light is a gentler way to wake up; no harsh rings or buzzes.

Inevitably we had to sleep together, quite the novelty with his rotating schedule, but yes, we did sleep together last night. This morning at 6am, I was somewhat rudely awakened by DH's screaming in the bed next to me.

"WHAT'S THAT?" he yelled. "WHAT'S THAT?!" I opened my eyes to see the bright blinking, illuminating the whole room. Quickly, somewhat ashamedly, I turned off the alarm and got out of bed. He went back to sleep, for a while longer.

Well, the firewood man was coming this morning at 8:30 and DH had said he wanted to clean up the wood stand before he got here. So, at 7:15, I reminded him that if wanted to get it done, he might want to get up. Rolling over, he took me into his arms and sweetly said, "Tell me about this normal clock." I had to laugh. In his dreams he had thought the flickering lights were the house ablaze.

I wish I had never called him Mr. Gadget. Actually my words were, "You're the gadgetinest man I ever met. " It was like TEN years ago, when he got the remote control ceiling fan for the front porch, which btw I love. Very convenient.

I will never live those words down.