On Saturday nights, I use my cell phone as my alarm clock. I do this because the alarm clock I have is basically a big giant annoyance to me. It has these huge numbers on it, so I can see the time in the middle of the night without my glasses. This is nice, except for the fact that I largely don't wake up once I fall asleep. On one of those rare occasions I actually am aroused from my hibernation, looking at the clock only upsets me because I am made aware of how soon I'll have to actually get up. Furthermore, the enormity of the LCD display gives explanation to the small aircrafts landing on our little street in the middle of the night. Ours is the only home with windows glowing a pale green, from the unhealthy eminations of my high quality $4 clock.
Anyway, back to the original stream of thought....I've been using my cell phone to wake me up on Sunday mornings and Monday mornings, when I have to get up before God's alarm clocks (my small children) do the job instead. The problem is, when my cell phone rings at 4:00 a.m., I invariably (for at least 12 weeks running, now) lunge out of bed, knock over anything on my night stand, yank the phone out of its charger base, and attempt to have a conversation with nobody.
"Hello? Hello? Why won't you talk to me?"
My wife then lovingly rolls over and says, "That was your alarm, Alexander Graham Bell. Go take a shower," and returns to her last two hours of slumber.
"Oh, yeah..." I say, apparently for my own consolation. I then proceed to the shower, mentally scolding myself for falling once again to Sprint's clever pranks. I'm obviously so consumed by my feeble-mindedness that I turn off the shower, step out, and begin to dry my hair.
"Oh man!" I say a llittle too loudly.
From the bedroom, I hear, "You forgot to wash out the conditioner again, didn't you, Paul Mitchell?"
I say nothing as I return to the shower....to wash out the conditioner.
Well, this is the normal course of action for the past three months. This past week, I came to the office to spend time in prayer, and I noticed on the computer that I had forgotten to "fall back." And moreover, my telephone hadn't made an adjustment either (Ha!, Take that, cruel PCS jokester!). So, I had an extra hour to pray and prepare.
At 7 a.m. (by now adjusted for daylight savings), one of my most faithful Sunday school teachers came in. I knew it was Pauline without seeing her. She is an 84 year-old widow who is always the first teacher in the building. She came in after a while and asked where everyone was. So, I smugly asked, "you didn't fall back, did you?" She answered, "No, I forgot all about it. I didn't have my television on last night, and went to bed reading. Oh well." I confessed my own lapse to her, and we had a good laugh about it.
To me, the spring forward...fall back thing is a lot like feed a cold...starve a fever. I'm not really good at remembering the 'helps' that are supposed to trigger a flood of information. For example, Kelli does this thing where she counts off the months on her knuckles to determine whether or not a month has 30 or 31 days. I'm in awe of her the when she pulls that one off. But then again, I'm the guy whose watch currently reads October 17, because I constantly forget to adust for the different days.
Whether or not this has anything to do with anything, I'll let you decide...the other day, when we were driving, our dashboard lights went out. I hit the top of the dash, and they came back on. I never felt more like Arthur Fonzarelli in my life (Sit on it, Potsy!).
Something just came up....will write more later.