What Happens When You Don't Set Your Alarm

QUESTION: What happens when you don't set your alarm in the morning?

ANSWER: You start your day already behind and your day might (OK, more than likely WILL) include various unexpected permutations that result in stress, something I am trying my darnedest to eliminate.

And guess what? This morning that is exactly how I started my day.

• My alarm didn't go off (of course not, I didn't set it, I rely on either Howie's alarm or Tianna's alarm to wake me up, a problem, I agree).
• Howie left WAY early this morning. I fell back asleep.
• Tianna's alarm also didn't go off. Now, I have no idea why that is because every weekend morning it wakes us all up because it goes off perfectly.
• I get Tianna, who is a morning person up, grab my coat and headed out the door all within seven minutes. Not bad.
• I let Nicole continue to sleep (Yes, there are other people in the house) and will get her off next.
• Oh, I did mention I still had my PJ's on, right? So you know what's coming...

What they say may happen (and why you should never go out in your jammies in public) did happen. I was involved in a fender bender. Let me add hastily that it wasn't my fault, but I still had to get out of my car. Coming up the last little home stretch of hill, the gentleman in front of me puts his signal on exactly two seconds prior to making a left hand turn and then promptly stops short, as a car is coming down the hill.

I successfully slammed on my brakes to avoid rear ending him. I was fine, my coffee was not.

The person driving behind me was not so successful and boom, rammed right into me. Darn it all, now Nicole was going to end up being late to school.

I felt really bad for the girl who hit me. It ended up being someone I knew, driving her first grade sister to school. No one was hurt, just shaken up. But the bad news for her was it was her fault because it is always the person's fault who is hitting someone from behind.

What about the guy in front of me who didn't provide me with a whole lot of notice? He sauntered across the street, looked at us, kind of smirked and made a comment about us following too closely. I will say that we were both travelling with as much space anyone does on that road, and kindly reminded him that he didn't give me much notice for his own driving choices of turning or stopping short. He was unimpressed and left, after reprimanding the girl behind me for not having control of her vehicle, shrugged and walked away. Nice, huh?

The policeman came and asked if I had my license. Uh, no, it is in my purse in my kitchen, where it did me a whole lot of good. But one of the benefits of living in a small town is everyone knows everyone, and even though we know each other socially, he was completely and totally professional.

So, her car couldn't be moved (cracked radiator), her air bag deployed and the whole front end was mushed. I only have a dent in my rear fender. Her parents came and I have to say I was really impressed. No yelling, no shame, no blame, the honest response that accidents happen and no one was hurt.

So lots of learning opportunities in this this morning, not the least of which is I will try to remember to set my alarm and not go out in my jammies, but don't hold your breath.

Today's Top Ten Trials

1. I didn't hear my alarm go off. But no worries, Tianna finally got her alarm set appropriately, AM instead of PM (and she kept wondering why it wasn't going off in the morning...) and she came in and woke me up at 6:36 and made the bus at 6:43. It's just a bit of a mad dash. It would never happen with Nicole.

2. I took my mom to her neurologist appointment today and the doctor was running over forty minutes late. And I forgot to bring my book with me.

3. When the doctor finally made it in he danced around the issue of ruling out multiple myeloma very deftly. I am still undecided at a gut level about how I feel about this. Maybe I just have too much medical knowledge. Multiple myeloma is a blood plasma cancer, and I know that using the word cancer causes people to freak out. It would definitely have that effect on my mom. So for the time being they are hedging about a spot on the MRI that might possibly be a growth that could be responsible for proteins in her blood that could be causing her neuropathy that is responsible for her falls. Did you follow that? You would have to have a medical background to not have it go completely over your head.

4. My back windshield wiper and one of my license plate lights became unhinged and are hanging pathetically off the back of my car.

5. I have mentioned several times that I am a techno peasant and I don't know how to readjust the settings on my computer that are presumably not allowing me to fill in information on forms. Oh, actually, it will let me fill it in,it just won't post it to where it needs to go and then it shunts me to a page that says Internet Explorer Cannot Find Web page over and over and over again. Do you know how frustrating that is?

6. Nicole used an exceptionally ugly tone of voice after school that once again tested my boundaries, but I prevailed and she lost her trip to the Salvation Army.

7. After school Nicole saw Matt's ancient cat pee on my living room wall. Yup, there it was, fresh cat pee dripping down through the cracks of the molding I had lovingly hand stained. Not to mention the smell.

8. The kids at swimming stroke clinic are all averse to doing flip turns and touching the wall on their bellies when they are swimming backstroke. What's up with that?

9. I drove Nicole to cheer leading practice and sat and read Churched while she was there. The only problem was I didn't realize my headlights were on the entire time. You guessed it, my battery died.

10. I actually had a cooked meal to serve when we got back from cheering and Tianna excused herself saying she'd be right back and never returned, and my mom made a comment about Nova being on, so Howie left the table, turned on the TV and plopped in front of it. So much for a family dinner. Two of the family members left prematurely. I wasn't happy and did say that leaving the table to turn the TV on when others were still eating was not part of the family dinner plan I had in mind. Of course that makes me a bit of a shrew...

OK, so it's all fairly normal day in the life stuff...you're not alone!

Peace.