I have not been able to sleep late, not once over this weekend, no not once. Technology, it seems, has raised it's ugly head, and all those people who have been prophesying about droids taking over the world... well, in my sleep-deprived state, I'm starting to believe it's true.
Thursday evening, it was with great glee and self-satisfaction that I turned off my alarm, and asked hubby to do the same - which he assured me he would do. And into bed I snuggled, might I reiterate with great glee and self-satisfaction, looking forward to sleeping in, and allowing my body to wake up naturally, no beeping, no twittering, no nothing. Sigh.
Friday morning, what should wake us up, but hubby's phone alarm - this, at 06h45, only an hour later than his usual alarm. There aren't many words to describe the internal inferno that took place in my heart, as the imaginings of boiling his phone alive as it screamed for mercy took over my mind. Once sufficiently cooled down, I managed to politely ask "What alarm was that?!" He responded as though stating the obvious, which I should have known, that "It's my public holiday alarm... you know, so I can get up and do stuff."
What....????? Is......?????? A public holiday alarm.......????????? Surely, something that defeats the whole purpose of a public holiday? Moving along, I couldn't fault hubby for his productive nature, and so I consoled myself that I still had three mornings of this long weekend, and I would surely get a nice lie in out of at least one of them.
Saturday morning. 04h00 AM. The house alarm goes off, signalling that a passive outside has been triggered by movement. To the panic stations!! Hubby is up as quick as lightning, running from window to window, huffing and and puffing the sleep out of his system. This window, that window, back to the alarm panel to check again which passive it was, back to the window. Of course, I was equally concerned for our safety, and so I chose to remain in bed and... well, pray. I'm not sure I prayed very much for our safety, because I recall praying more that the alarm system would spontaneously go up in flames leaving us in eternal peace forevermore, to sleep for as friggin' long as we so please...
As is custom with me when I'm woken up anytime after 03h00 AM, I couldn't really get back to sleep, so I lay, and had a staring-competition with the alarm panel, seeing the evil lurk behind those red little LED's... Quite sure I saw the hint of a sinister smile, it was at this point that I started to realize that perhaps technology has got it in for us after all...
Sunday morning, hubby had arranged to have a gardener come in for the day, and do some work. At 06h45. Sigh. Having been forewarned of this, I was neither surprised, and only a little bothered by the alarm going off. And as such, I was able to drift back into a light, pleasant slumber. Which was disturbed five minutes later by hubby's phone ringing, the gardener's way of letting us know that he was waiting outside our gate. I managed to maintain a exterior of absolute cool and calm, but if I must be honest, my insides were boiling and bubbling, and all but evaporating out of my ears, as I plotted the cell phone's demise once more. I've decided that boiling alive is too merciful for such an evil, it must be pulled apart piece by piece. By piece. By little piece. Yeeeessss.
So it was with gentle persistence that I informed hubby last night that there are to be no phone alarms on this, our final day of the long weekend. He wholeheartedly agreed, and together we gushed about how wonderful it would be to sleep in and wake up... naturally! On this united front, we went to bed....
At some point during the night, our house alarm started beeping in a frenzy, signalling not that there is an intruder, but rather that the power has gone off. Yes. The &@#* alarm wakes you up to tell you that the %^&@*$* power is off. Why, thank you Alarm, I can now lie awake and ponder the future of this country, and what it will be like when we all run out of fossil fuels and have to run to work on foot and rely on the sunshine alone to warm up our geysers and when we all go to bed when the sun sets and there's no more TV and wait.... NO MORE FRIGGIN ALARMS GOING OFF FOR NO APPARENT REASON.....
*deep breathing exercises*
Somehow, I don't know how, but somehow, through the hissing steam coming out of my ears, I managed to fall asleep again, and found comfort in the fact that I could still enjoy a lie in this morning... until 06h00. Which is the time that hubby's phone made a rather cute little chirp. It wasn't an alarm, nor phone call, nor a message, and the total length of the chirp couldn't have been more than three seconds. In fact, it sounded what I would imagine to be technology's equivalent of a little giggle.
As little as the sound was, it was all that was needed....
 |
| You woke me up... You better be on fire or something... |
And so it is that I'm once again awake. And now that hubby's phone is laughing at me outright, quite certain that technology is making it's first advances on warfare with humankind, using the stealthy strategy of sleep-deprivation, until we are all nothing more than cussing, crazy-eyed, hollow people, having incinerated our own insides with fury and desperation....
Keep your bloodshot eyes open, Fellow Inhabitants of this Planet, they're coming for us!!!!
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