An awakening

These few weeks in Germany have been much like an ideal vacation.  I'm meeting interesting new people, exploring the geography in Potsdam in depth, enjoying gorgeous weather, spending little money, and in general experiencing almost no stress.  I'm exercising, eating well, I've stopped biting my nails entirely, and I'm even learning a little German.  Unfortunately, this no-stress lifestyle has made it very easy to ignore the little baby alarm clock that I bought in England.

I have resolved to take control of my sleeping habits, mostly because sleeping too late has prevented me on each of the last three days from going to IKEA to buy the rug that my room is begging for.  So I've spent the last 45 minutes practicing waking up.  According to the internet, half-asleep people make poor decisions (also according to the internet, fully awake people make poor decisions, but this topic is best reserved for less lighthearted blogs).  Also also according to the internet, the only way to wake up using an alarm is to make the process completely automatic.  So I just did 5 repetitions of this process:

0. Lie in bed for five minutes, pretend to sleep.  When alarm goes off,

1. Turn on light.

2. Get dressed for running.

3. Get a drink of water.

4. Go out the door.

It turns out that I have an extremely strong visceral reaction to alarms, and that reaction is anger.  Even when I am lying there just waiting for the alarm to go off, those first notes of the Friends theme (a ringtone which the previous owner of the phone had downloaded; I think it's funny) fill me with rage.  I had never realised that I was that averse to waking up.  But perhaps that is why I do not recall turning off my alarm any of the last three mornings.  Sleeping people, after all, rarely make decisions quite as poor as those of their wakeful peers.