MY ALARM IS A BLESSING AND A CURSE

I don't really like to get up in the morning. I understand that I am perhaps not unique in this respect. Thankfully, the market has created products to assist people like me.

The alarm I have has a couple of important features. First, I have always had a problem with loud, adrupt alarms. They historically have caused me to sight bolt upright in fear, turn the alarm off in a haze, and lay back down to immediately fall back asleep. That is not very useful. Thus, this alarm has a feature that allows it to fade in slowly, getting progressively louder over the course of about thirty seconds. This is a blessing.

Second, the alarm has several functions, including turning on the radio to wake me up, playing a CD, or playing an "alarm" sound. I currently have it set to some pop music station. I used to have it on news/talk AM radio, or NPR, but it turns out that I am able to incorporate news reports into my dreams and stay quite asleep. I have a harder time incorporating pop music into my dreams, especially since I do not like very much pop music. This is a blessing.

This morning my alarm went off, got "snoozed", and went off again. The first time the song was Johnny Cash singing Ring of Fire. That song was bouncing through my "snooze" brain, when the alarm went off again. It was Neil Diamond singing Sweet Caroline. Sweet Weeping Jesus. Please help me. What am I, at Fenway Park? Now I have both of those songs stuck in my head. This is a curse.