Good mornin', good mornin'

Twice this week I hit the snooze button on my alarm and it never came back on. So last night I went to Walmart and searched for an alarm.

In the Warsaw Walmart alarm clocks are near the watches in the jewelry department. It kind of makes sense. It would make more sense if they were in the electronics department. In the Walmart near my house the jewelry department is next to the electronics department, so finding an alarm clock should be easy. Should. Tragically Walmart hates it's customers.

I wandered the store and finally found alarm clocks with the luggage.

My alarm clock isn't cool. It's main features are that it automatically sets the time, switches to daylight savings, and has a backup battery so you don't have to panic when the electric goes out.

But online I found the Bim Bam Banana puzzle alarm clock.

When the alarm goes off the puzzle pieces come out and the alarm won't turn off till you solve the puzzle. Clever, but at $50 it's a little pricey.

Another clock, which I think might be the most brilliant invention ever to tell time: is the Sfera. “When the alarm chimes in the morning, the only way to silence it is to reach up and gently tap the Sfera. This action initiates the snooze function, but it also makes the Sfera rise above your head towards the ceiling. As it slowly rises away from your reach, you must stretch higher each time to gain another ten minutes of snooze. When it reaches the ceiling, you have no option but to reach for it and drag it back down to your bed – an action which switches off the alarm and forces you finally to get up.”

Yes - amazing. But not in production.

In my search for more about Sfera I discovered the bedzine blog. They have a clock section. It has all kinds of crazy, inovative, and outragiously expensive clocks. They shake, they fly, there's even a clock that decides for you, when you should get up.

But my favorite clocks are the dawn simulators. I wake up alright when it's bright outside, but I have a devil of a time trying to wake up in the dark, even when I've had more than enough sleep.

"Our wonderful biorhythm clock will restore your pizzazz and let you start the day alert and ready for anything. Ordinary alarm clocks wake you up suddenly, so you jump from deep sleep to consciousness in seconds. That leaves you needing time to "wake up" properly – and you may even start the day feeling irritable, tired and needing coffee to get going. "

While I am emphatically against the use of words like "pizzazz" I think the idea of a clock that slowly gets brighter and brighter till I wake up - is fabulous.

The act of waking up is traumatic all on it's own - I don't need an obnoxious buzzer scaring the snot out of me to make the experience any worse. I used to have panic attacks any time my alarm would go off. It just isn't a good way to get my day started! Unfortunately this lovely clock costs $99.

This little bugger does the same thing, but it costs $69 rather than $99. I know, at the point you're paying more than $20 to wake up you've already lost your mind, $30 more or less doesn't change this.

My personal plan is to buy one of those vacation light timers and a lamp. The light comes on. I wake up. All is well. And for less than $20.