For those of you who did not know, I am completely deaf. What that means is that a bomb could go off in the background behind me and I would be totally unaware the exception of feeling any applied force given off from such a explosion. So when I tell you that the "Sonic Boom" feature of my alarm clock has been rendered completely useless you know what I am talking about.
So how do I or other deaf folk wake up anyhow? Are we naturally trained or prone to just "wake up" when the time is right? Ahh no. LOL I have an alarm clock (yeah the sonic boom one) that has what is called a "bed shaker". No it is not like on the movies when you see X and B rent a cheap motel room in Nevada that shakes when fed a coin. Attached via a cord, is a little flying saucer shaped device the vibrates when it is time for the alarm to go off. It can either be set to "steady" mode or "pulse". I set it to pulse so I do not sleep through it thinking I am in a massage chair or in a long earthquake.
Anyhow, the idea is that you put this little flying saucer shaker thing under your pillow so that it vibrates your head in the morning. LOL I actually slept through it once in a dream of great havoc! In my dream my head kept vibrating and nobody believed me! It was awful! (In the dream) I kept telling doctors and nurses that something was wrong with my brain because it would not stop vibrating and was causing me headaches and rendering me unable to concentrate. They did MRIs on my brain and found things unchanged so it was a mystery. It was horrible! My head just kept vibrating. In reality this went on for just over an hour until I finally woke up thank God! It is no fun to have a vibrating head/brain for that long a period of time. Thus it normally does the trick to wake me up.
For the second time however, the dang vibrator (the flying saucer device) snuck out from under my pillow. On both occassions ironically, I was too tired the night before and had planned to wake early to type up my homework for class that morning. The first time I had woke 20-30 minutes before I was to leave the house to meet my carpool. This time however, I managed to wake up about 30 minutes earlier giving me enough time to type something from memory (al beit cheesy and half ass) from my receptive translation video I watched the night before.
When I awoke there was more daylight out. Confused I looked at the clock and realized I had slept a little over an hour and a half longer than I had planned to wake. Mad at myself and the clock, I double checked that I did indeed set it for AM and not PM. I thought I had remembered double checking this before I went to bed. The alarm was still enabled for the correct time. Angry, I wondered what the heck was wrong with the stupid clock. Everything was set right! Then I followed the cord to the flying saucer shaker where it ly gittering on the floor in the crevice between the bed and dresser.
If Harley was on night shift he would have been able to hear the shaker knocking between the wood of the bed and dresser. But, because he is on day shift, he leaves for work at 5:30 in the morning. Neither his stirring or turning on the lights wake me so I continue to sleep until I wake 3 hours later to the vibrations of the bed shaker.
There is also a light flasher option on the alarm clock (meaning that it can be hooked up to a lamp which will flash on and off when the alarm goes off). Seeing as Harley will not be home, I may connect it and try to see if that helps. I have been known however to sleep through lights. Most often I awake to the bed shaker. It is only twice now that it has fallen out from under the pillow. I must have moved around and knocked it off the bed.
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