Wednesday, 16 June 2004 | Make it stop

It happens roughly the same way every weekday morning. The radio begins its banter at 8:05 and I fail to hear it. At 8:13 the surging beeps set in and I pretty successfully ignore them, or, on rare occasions, somehow incorporate them into the sleepy nonsense boxing around in my head.

By 8:14 she is sniffing my face or walking across my curled up body in an effort to tell me to Make It Stop. A hand in the air, I bring it down squarely on top of the plastic screamer and all is suddenly quiet. I whisper a "thank you," she settles down by my head and begins to purr, and I promptly disappear again, until my ten-minute grace period is over. And then we begin again.

Sometimes I make the mistake of trying to turn off the beeping part of the alarm and just lie in bed, with my eyes closed, and listen to the news for a little while. It goes okay for a moment; usually the first few stories register as "good" and "bad," depending on what I think of those particular items, and then they stop making any sense, just as I begin to float away. Of course, if I could watch myself do this, I would yell at myself the same way I would yell at the girl in the horror film: bad idea! But, just as I am able to tune out the alarm, I hardly ever hear her yelling.

Sometimes the alarm confuses me, despite its relatively simple design; I do nonsensical things with the buttons and I disable it altogether. Take that! Sometimes I look at my watch and don't have a clue what time it is (it doesn't help that it's set 15 minutes fast, or that my alarm clock is set 10 minutes fast), and sometimes I don't know when I'm actually supposed to get up, or whether it's morning or night.

I've almost come to depend on her, even though she really only cares that I create peace, and not whether I actually get out of bed. She's generally quiet, patient, and sweet, which is really the only good way to wake me up. (I don't respond well to the covers being jerked away or hearing loud DJs or happy "good morning" songs. Not that she's capable of any of those things.)

Once, I recall her meowing in time with the alarm, I guess to boost the volume, and recently, she planted a front paw directly in the middle of my forehead and left it there until I silenced the devil alarm. It's the only time I can remember laughing the very second I woke up.