My least favorite time of day: 2:09 am (sort of)

I am convinced one of two things is going on in the Bacho home, we are a hub for the supernatural or Lucy grows opposable thumbs while I am away at work every day. These are the only two logical explanations for what happened this morning.

At 2:09 a.m. precisely, well not exactly precisely (The clock is set 23 minutes ahead of "real time" to help Princess and I get going in the morning, but that's another story and irrelevant to this one). So the clock says 2:09 a.m.; Precious is sleeping as soundly as a locomotive running through a minefield with a load of boom boxes all playing Gilbert Gottfried's rendition of "How Do You Solve Problem Like Maria"; in other words LOUD. (You should know readers that Lucy is a snorer. For some reason she also likes to sleep with her paws in the air. Have I set the visual for you?) I am also dreaming away, no paws sticking up, but certainly snoring along with her highness. Then all hell breaks loose.... My alarm clock starts beeping, the weather radio on the unit comes on and the CD door starts grinding away like a little hammer (tick, tick, tick...). I leap out of bed, in the dark, and start hitting all the buttons to make the cacophony end.

A little background on the clock before I continue. This is only the second alarm clock I've ever owned. I asked for a clock a few years ago that had bigger numbers; the eyes you know are the second thing to go, the mind took off around '95 and hasn't been seen since. My mother bought me, as a gift, this high tech Sony clock that has a radio, weather channel, different settings for the display light and it has a CD player; it's really top notch. I only have two complaints and the first is my fault, I accidentally dropped it shortly after getting it so the door to the CD portion grinds, thus the tick, tick, ticking. This is really only an issue when we lose power or unplug it, then for several minutes it grinds. The second, and by far most annoying feature of the clock is the number of buttons on it. I am not exaggerating, there are 27 freakin' buttons on the machine! I guess the Chinese or Japanese (whoever made it) require tests of logic before their feet hit the floor or they have a wicked sense of humor and enjoy the thought that American's are fumbling with the complicated process to turn the darn thing off every morning.

Back to the story... the clock is now doing cartwheels around my night stand, I am hitting any combination of buttons my sleepy fingers can press and Lucy is in her bed kicking her paws in the air while lying on her back in an attempt to stand up, she looks like a hairy brown turtle that managed to flip itself over. Finally she rights herself and gets her nose up to the nightstand to see what's going on. I am still swatting at the infernal machine. Somehow I've now managed to turn up the volume, without knowing how I did it, and I changed the channel to the John Tesh radio show. It's gone from bad to I don't know what. I considered yanking the cord out of the wall, but I would have had to actually get up and move the bed, not something I was capable of at 2:10 a.m. I realize that I am not making any progress so I turn on the light and look at Lucy, she has a wide eyed and wild look in her eye that says "What the hell is going on dad?" Unfortunately I don't have an answer for her, but I am able to manage the complex 8-button combination, using both hands and a toe, to make the chaos stop...or so I thought. I lie back down, and try to think of calming thoughts to bring my heart rate to a reasonable level when the whole affair starts over, evidently the combination of buttons caused it to snooze and not turn off. It is now 2:17 a.m. a much more reasonable hour to move the bed and yank the cord out of the wall. That's how I killed it.


So on my list of things to do this morning:

1. Move bed back against the wall.
2. Buy new clock.
3. Get snoring strips for Lucy and I to wear when we go to bed.
4. Fire off angry letter to Sony and demand less buttons on their next model of alarm clocks.
5. Call a priest, a rabbi and and Mary Hart to exercise the demons and John Tesh out of the condo.
6. Schedule a vet appointment to research the opposable thumb situation.
7. Throw out my copies of "The Sound of Music" and "Aladdin," cuz I just hate the sound of Gilbert Gottried's voice that much.

A little post script to this fiasco that you might enjoy. I've never actually used the alarm function on the clock. I had so many problems figuring out the buttons when I first got it that I never worked out how to set it, also I am blessed with that natural ability to wake up when I need to; it's called a princess who whines when she's got to go potty.

Later, loyal readers.....