User Error

The school year began last September and that means, if my calculations are correct, we've had eight months of mornings that include getting up at the same time, putting on an outfit that doesn't say "Hey, look at me, I'm a colorblind idiot," grabbing a backpack and heading out the door. I thought that after eight months, this routine would be drama-free and dependable. Since Zoe's still in kindergarten I'll cut her a little slack, but I thought that I'd be able to rely on the people in this house that are between the heights of 4'9" and 5'5" to get their asses out of bed on time and be able to dress themselves.

These thoughts can now be found in the same category as "I thought that someday I'd grow boobs" and "I thought that my feet had reached their maximum width after two pregnancies," and that category is labeled: I WAS WRONG.

Over the last couple weeks, Charlie has been busted a couple of times for oversleeping, even though his alarm clock was set correctly and had went off. The problem isn't that the alarm clock is defective, but that it's suffering from user error. You see, Charlie was getting annoyed that the music waking him up in the morning was annoyingly loud, so he turned the volume down. Way down. So he couldn't hear it down. Because then, you know, it wouldn't annoy him. Apparently he didn't consider the fact that it would then NOT WAKE HIM UP!

His solution was to then turn the volume up a little bit, but then for some reason he also set the alarm to go off twenty minutes before he needed to actually haul his ass out of bed, kind of like a snooze button for morons. This would have worked fine, if it weren't for the fact that after he turned the alarm off, he fell back to sleep. And unlike the actual snooze button, a second alarm didn't go off 9 minutes later to wake his barely functioning brain back up. I have a feeling that he's going to get up on time by himself now, though, since he's discovered that waking up to your mom shouting "APPARENTLY YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO OPERATE AN ALARM CLOCK, BECAUSE YOU ARE STILL IN BED! GET UP! NOW!" is even more annoying than waking up to music.

Zach gets up earlier than anyone else in the house (well, except me, of course) and uses the alarm on his iPhone. In a perfect world this would work great, since there are several times when he has to wake up earlier than normal. The night before one of these mornings, he told me "I have choir rehearsal in the morning so I need a ride to school early. I'll get up at 6:15." I said okay, that's fine, don't forget to change the time on your alarm and he assured me that "duh, yah, it's been done already. Geez."

The next morning, I got up to make him breakfast and myself a keg of coffee and waited to hear his feet hit the floor. And waited. And then did shots of coffee and waited some more. Finally, I went upstairs and asked him if today was in fact the day he was referring to when he said he needed a ride to school, and if it was then "WHY ARE YOU STILL SLEEPING IF YOUR ALARM IS SET!" He sat up and gave me a look that pretty much said "why in the hell is my mom standing in my room what day is it I'm completely confused what the fuck is going on right now," and then said "Oh crap, what is going on? Something weird must have happened because I know I set it right. I don't know why it didn't go off." I said yeah, gee, it's really weird how every other feature on your phone works perfectly except that pesky alarm. Hmm, I guess it must be broken, since it couldn't possibly be because it's being SET WRONG and suffering from USER ERROR! I guess I should just return the piece of crap and park a rooster on the roof outside your window!

Yesterday morning, on Mother's Day, I got up at my usual time and was emptying the dishwasher when I got a text. I thought it was from someone wishing me a happy Mother's Day, but instead it was from Charlie, who was still laying in bed, saying "I want Apple Jacks for breakfast." Although my boys have difficulties operating the alarm on the iPhone, at least I know that they're always able to text, and apparently Charlie has developed an interesting variation of a Breakfast in Bed App.