That Awkward Moment When Your Body Betrays You

I have learned in life that there are going to be times when your body betrays you.  There are going to be those awkward moments when you want it to do something, but it decides that it's just not having any part of your plans.  Depending on what it is that you do in life, you may experience this betrayal in various ways, but at some point you will experience it.  I'm sure that it has to be a universal truth.  

I'm going to share with you a few laughable moments where my body has betrayed me.  

To begin, you need context.  I have Cerebral Palsy.  This has taught me that my body is extremely creative in coming up with new ways to make my life interesting.  I've learned that when I encounter new people, it's probably one of the first things that I should tell them...you know, get the elephant out of the room.  I've also learned that it's fun if you can do it in such a way as to surprise them, like saying "I'm not smashed right now, I just have Cerebral Palsy."  Basically, it's not going to affect your life much if you know me.  If you're walking with me somewhere and we encounter stairs, it's polite that you offer me the side with the handrail...or if there is no handrail and I know you well, a shoulder or arm to use as one is also appreciated.  If you're my best friend and you know how to read me, you're also allowed to offer me help if you see that my body is in the process of betraying me.  Other than that, you're good.  

One of the particularly annoying (and sometimes hysterical) "symptoms" (side-effects?  I don't know.) of CP is what I call "shaky hands".  This means that my hands (and actually my entire body but it's only visible in my hands really) trembles...sometimes not much, but sometimes I could make Jiffy Pop like a pro on the stove without even trying.

These stories are about how my body betrayed me with the "shaky hands".  (By the way, it's more than OK to laugh...I laugh about it.)

1.  Please don't fail me, I promise I passed kindergarten:

So the problem with shaky hands is that they're completely unpredictable and can strike at any moment.  Usually their favorite moments are precisely when you're going to be doing something where someone is going to notice that you're uncontrollably shaking...or that you can't perform fine motor skills.  

You can imagine, then, the horror I experienced while I'm defending the first chapter of my dissertation and they get started...and I was supposed to take notes.

I could barely hold a pencil, much less imagine how I was going to write, but I was determined.  I summoned up all my will and told my hand to behave.  I told it that we were going to write words on the paper.  In fact, I put so much energy to talking to my hand, that I could hardly pay attention to what anyone was saying.  I managed to scribble out some illegible words, and then I noticed my director just staring at me...or rather at my hand.  Great.  That helps.

I realized how ridiculous this must look.  I have written a chapter that four great academic minds are complimenting and I cannot write any better than a one year old.  I panicked...were they going to fail me because I appeared to lack the basic skills of a small child?  What were they thinking?  At first I considered taking notes with my mouth.  I've never tried to write with my mouth before, but it couldn't have been any worse or looked any more bizarre to them than what was taking place.

Finally, I pretended that I was done taking notes.  I put the pencil down, put my hands in my lap, and tried to avoid using them for the rest of the meeting.  Luckily they didn't fail me just because of my lack of motor skills...but I'm sure it gave them something to talk about.

2.  I love Chinese food!

I love Chinese food, especially in leftover form.  It's way better as a leftover than it is when you first get it, kind of like Italian food.  

One day a friend of mine is visiting and we're sitting down to have Chinese food.  This friend, luckily, was well seasoned to shaky hands and therefore they didn't need any explanation as to why my hands were shaking.  

I pick up my fork, dig into my rice, and before the fork can make it to my mouth, all the rice had been shaken off.  So for a little while I ate the chicken.  I could stab that.  

But it made me sad, because I loved the rice most of all and really wanted it.  So then I got a great idea.  A spoon!  I was so thrilled because even though some of the rice shook off the spoon, a lot of it made it my mouth.  

But then there was another problem...the chicken, when scooped up on the spoon inevitably shook off...

No problem.  Just use both.  Luckily my friend didn't bat an eye at the fact that I ate the rest of my meal alternating between a fork and a spoon.  She's lucky that worked because I was seriously considering just going at it pig trough style...or maybe going full caveman and eating it all with my hands.  

And people wonder why I don't know how to use chopsticks...

(Yes, I'm fully aware that the silverware pictured looks like it got run over, but that's the best I could do.)

3.  Sometimes you just need coffee:

I really need coffee in the morning.  I am not human until I've had it.  The problem is that with shaky hands, doing things like pouring liquid from one container to another or even moving cups/bowls full of liquid can be pretty messy...extremely messy in fact.

Getting coffee grounds from the jar to the coffee cup is no exception to this.  They go everywhere. I've been grumpy enough in the morning that I've actually considered just taking the coffee jar and pouring it directly into my cup...no measuring, nothing.  It would be the best plan...but the coffee would probably kill me.  

So here's how it goes on a typical shaky hands morning.  I put the coffee cup on the counter and we have a staring match.  I get a spoon and the jar out.  First I'll try to be all cool about it and put the spoon in the jar and then very, very carefully...shake coffee grounds all over the counter.  I'll usually do that once or twice.

Then there's another tactic:  The quick transfer.  This one is great.  This is where you hover the jar over the coffee cup with the idea that you can quickly remove the spoon and drop the grounds directly into the cup.  It's a good idea.  Usually it turns out more along the lines of remove the spoon, drop most of the crystals all around the cup, and get a little into the cup.

If you repeat this practice enough, though, you'll eventually get enough in the cup...and you'll have a great big mess to clean up...after you finish your coffee of course.  

So there you have it.  When you're life fails you, and it will happen at some point if it hasn't happened yet, as  annoying as it may be, try to laugh at it and figure out an alternative.  Sometimes you have to be very creative, but eventually you'll figure out some way around it.  

The Time I Learned I'd Never Climb Mount Everest

I am not accustomed to snow.  Rather, I should say that I wasn't accustomed to snow, I've had a lot of lessons about it since moving to a place where I'm often forced to deal with it for more than one or two days a year and in more copious quantities than the light dustings I saw as a kid.

Let me tell you a little about snow.  

When I was a kid, I thought it was awesome.  I was wrong.  Snow is not awesome.  It's about the most non-awesome thing that exists, second only to ice.  Unfortunately the two go hand in hand, making them almost the same thing in my mind.

It's pretty when it's falling.  It's pretty in the morning, when you look at the blanket of it covering the ground, untouched.  Then it ceases to be pretty.  It's just dirty, messy, nastiness that gets trampled down and refreezes to form ice.

If I'm at home with my pajamas, my couch, and Gus, this is fine.  However, on days that I have to work, I despise snow.  

So here's a little adventure I had the first time it snowed here.  It was also the first time that I really, truly accepted the fact that I would never even attempt to climb Mount Everest.

Outside my apartment, leading up to the main road that I need to get on in order to get to work, there is a sidewalk that runs up a sloping hill.  It's not that bad of a hill on a regular basis.  It's actually a nice little hill.  Here's what it looks like normally:

(Ok, so maybe there aren't really any happy flowers...it's actually lined with dog poo and pieces of people's cars who have misjudged if it was their turn to go or not...but the flowers are nicer.)

I realized, however, that my happy little hill has a dark side when it's covered in a blanket of snow and ice.  The first morning that I had to walk to school after a ridiculous (in my opinion) snowfall, I wasn't too sure about things.  I toddled across the parking lot and made my way to the sidewalk.  I looked up the little hill that I had climbed so many times before.  Except now it wasn't a happy little hill.  Now it looked more like this:

Now that the little hill was covered in ice, and taking into consideration that I had experienced enough difficulty toddling over the flat parking lot, this was a major obstacle.

But I had to get to work...so I started up the little hill.  And then something strange happened...I slid back down.  I realized this wasn't going to be easy at all.  I started up the little hill again, a little faster and leaning forward.  

And I slid back down.

Third time's a charm, right?  So I started up again, a little faster and leaning so far forward that Icould have almost been crawling up the hill (and I was considering that).  I reached my salvation.  A guide wire coming down from one of the electrical poles, and I clung to it.  

So here I was, clinging to the guide wire.  If I let go, I was going to slide back down the hill.  For me, that wasn't an option.  I realized, however, that going forward wasn't a choice that was mine to make either.  So I just stayed there...at first feeling very, very sad and sorry for myself.  I couldn't go up and I didn't want to go down and the stupid snow had left me with no other option than to stay there, feeling pathetic, and hanging from that guide wire like a fish on a line.

I wasn't really sure how long I could stay there, though.  I did have to get to work eventually.  I was going to have to solve this problem because hanging on the guide wire was not going to get me anywhere in life.  

Then I realized how nice and salted the roads were.  There was hardly any snow at all on them...it was nothing like the treacherous sidewalk.  Finally, I made a decision.  I let go of my precious wire and slid backwards down the hill, like I had predicted I would do.  I toddled off the sidewalk and into the road.  Bingo!  I could walk up the road!

And I did.  And to anyone who honked at me, I do not apologize for any gestures you may have found offensive.  When they learn to salt the sidewalks as generously as they do the road, I'll consider using them when it snows.

I know now, though, that if I could not climb my little hill in the snow, there's absolutely nothing in me that would even DREAM of trying to climb Mount Everest.  

The Night The Ceiling Fell

I know that my parents have to hate getting phone calls from me sometimes.  They have to hate it even more when I'm with my best friend.  For some reason the most bizarre things seem to happen when we're together.  It's like Murphy's Law intensified.  That's why I know my mother hated getting the call the night the ceiling fell.

This night was just a calm night.  My mother and stepfather were at the local football game and my best friend and I were home from college and hanging out for the weekend.  We were sitting in the bedroom, enjoying a few frosty adult beverages, and catching up on everything that had happened during the last few weeks since we'd seen each other.  

Throughout our conversation I kept hearing a strange noise.  It sounded like something dripping.  I finally asked my best friend if she heard it and she laughed at me.  There was no dripping inside, I was just hearing things.  

So we continued to talk...and I continued to hear something dripping.  

As we sat there, the dripping that I was hearing in my head was getting louder.  Finally, something splashed on me and I looked up...it's not common to get rained on in your bedroom.  Sure enough, there was a tiny little drip of water coming from the ceiling.  I called her attention to it and we both stood there staring at it for a moment.

It's not everyday that there's water falling from  your ceiling.  I don't think either of us was quite prepared for what we were seeing, and it took a moment for either of us to figure out what to do.  

The first thing we did was move the mattress out of the bed, since the leak had started right over the bed.  The second thing we did was run downstairs and grab a pot to put under the leak.  

The real problem was that by the time we got back upstairs, the little leak had turned into a big leak...and there were more leaks.  There were a lot more leaks.  This was the first time I was ever appreciative that we had so many pots in the house.  

By the time we got all the pots arranged around the bedroom, it became evident that we had a slightly bigger problem on our hands than we first realized.  Now chunks of the ceiling were beginning to fall and join the water the pots were holding.  

It was time to call mom.

So I called mom and explained first that we had nothing to do with what I was about to tell her.  We were innocent bystanders.  Then I explained the problem of the water and the ceiling chunks.  She told me to go outside and clean something out that had to do with the air conditioner.  

So while best friend continued to carry pots up the stairs, I ventured out into the darkness to rummage around in the bushes trying to accomplish a task that I really had no idea how to do.  I didn't know anything about the particular item that I was searching for...or really how to clean it out...and it was dark and I couldn't see...and the flashlight I had must have been running on the same batteries since 1970 so I only had about an inch of visibility in front of me...and I was positive that ten thousand man-eating angry spiders were surrounding me.  It was not a good situation.  

Finally, having accomplished my task and having turned off the air conditioner, there was nothing more to do but wait for the parents to get home and handle the situation.  We would later find out there had been a problem with the air conditioner and the ceiling would later be repaired.

For that night, however, best friend and I did all we could and while we waited for the parents we spent the night rearranging and emptying pots and staring at the ceiling.  We learned a few valuable lessons from that situation.  #1: If you hear dripping, don't think it's in your head.  It's probably an indication that you're moments away from having your own indoor waterfall.  #2: Having a lot of pots may seem like overkill when you're preparing dinner, but you should probably have enough to cover the entire surface area of your floor.  Just in case you should have a growing waterfall.  #3: It's no longer possible to surprise my parents with the situations which occur around best friend and I.

How I Developed Maskaphobia

While thinking about this post, in the shower (where I do my best thinking), I realized that I have many phobias.  A little google medical search, however, assures me that it's common to have multiple phobias and that all of mine are fairly common and are diagnosed phobias.  So what that means is that I'm probably crazy, but at least I'm not the only one.  

I don't know where most of my phobias came from.  I suspect where a few developed, though, and I'm pretty positive about two of them.  Maskaphobia and coulrophobia.

Coulrophobia is the fear of clowns.  I was not always afraid of clowns, in fact I loved them at one time.  Then I had a traumatic clown experience.  I will not talk about that experience because it was that traumatic.  Suffice it to say that I now hate clowns.

Maskaphobia is the fear of masks.  I looked it up because I didn't know if it actually existed.  Apparently it does and it's very common.  In fact, it's actually considered part of a child's developmental stage and is not considered a phobia unless there is something (generally a traumatic experience) that makes it "stick".  Interestingly enough, many people who suffer from one of these phobias also suffers from the other.  Also, those who are maskaphobics vary greatly in what kinds of masks they are afraid of.  

I am afraid of all masks that cover the face entirely.  All of them.  Bunny rabbits, Barbie, Mickey Mouse, monsters, mascots, presidential candidates...all of them.  A hockey game or a carnival could potentially end my life.

The point at which it is  most likely that I developed this fear is the following story.  My disclaimer is that I was too young to remember the episode (or I blocked it from my memory) and therefore will tell it to you as it was told to me.

I was with my parents in a store near Halloween.  Of course we had to take a little trip to look at the costumes and other Halloween decorations.  Apparently, my father was playing in the masks and decided to put one on.

Let me give you just a little background.  My father can be an...um...intimidating figure due to his sheer size.  He's very tall.  

He once dressed as Frankenstein for Halloween (a very good costume) and, upon trying to help a little boy at the church carnival, nearly scared the child to death.  I'm sure somewhere that child is blogging about his fear of Frankenstein's monster.

The combination of my father's size and the rubber mask that he selected apparently terrified me. I'm unclear as to if he actually "Booed" me or if he just put the mask on without any intent of trying to frighten me.  It doesn't matter.  The damage was done...and I was screaming.  

I would not stop screaming.  Nothing would make me stop.  Even after he removed the mask I continued to scream.  My parents, of course, were frantically trying everything they could think of to get me to calm down since I'm sure this was causing a little bit of scene in the store.

Apparently I didn't care that I was causing a scene.  I just kept screaming.  

Finally, they tell me, they found a doll that calmed me down some.  

I loved that doll and named her "Yellow Baby" (she had a yellow outfit).  It would be years later when I would wonder where I got the doll and would be told the story.

Now I know where I got both Yellow Baby and an irrational fear of masks.  I'm pretty sure that my response probably caused my father to develop a fear of wearing masks...at least I have never seen him put one on since then.  On the other hand, that could just be out of respect for my phobia.  

And now you know why you're not likely to find  me out on Halloween night.  I'd much rather stay inside where it's safe and I will not potentially be caused to have a heart attack by an encounter with Batman on the sidewalk.  

Why I Don't Go To Haunted Houses

When I was young, we used to have my mom's family reunion on Halloween.  That meant that the kids were often dressed in costumes and each year a group of cousins would escape the family reunion to go to the Haunted House.  Like most people, they liked being scared on Halloween.  I am not like most people.

I'm very easily frightened.  There are two reasons for this.  One is because of a neurological disorder that I have and the other is because I'm a big ol' scaredy cat.

The neurological disorder causes me to have "a heightened startle response".  I'll explain it to you in very simple terms.  Most people, when startled by someone walking up behind them or toast in the toaster popping up, will jump slightly and respond according to the severity of the situation that has startled them.  Again...I am not like most people.  When put in the same situations I have to then very carefully peel myself off the ceiling.  This has caused a lot of laughter through the years and has led me to believe that my death by a massive coronary episode will very likely be caused by toast.  

For this reason I avoid scary movies and terrible things like Jack-in-the-boxes.  

But I wanted to be cool and go with the cousins to the Haunted House one year.  Everyone went to them and I was always going to be lame if I didn't learn to control myself and love being scared.  So one year I decided to tag along.

I'm still considering that to be one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in life.  

The trip was great, right up until we got to the parking lot and got on the hayride that would take us up to the Haunted House.  As soon as we pulled out people would pop out from behind trees with chainsaws all along the path.  I was terrified and trying very hard to hold it together, but I was beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that I should have stayed at the family reunion and gorged myself on sweets.

When we arrived at the Haunted House, things began to get worse.  Now there were people with chainsaws running around while we waited in line, and on top of that there people wearing masks and wandering around to entertain people who were waiting.

I have a phobia of masks.  

I don't know why it didn't occur to me that my startle response...which at this point was already making me feel like I might have a heart attack...and my phobia of masks...would make this adventure a bad idea.  I don't always think things through.

Still, I kept telling myself in my head that I could beat this thing.  I could make it through somehow.  I could close my eyes and plug my ears and survive the Haunted House with all my cousins.  I selected two of my older cousins who I thought could protect me and changed my place in line so that I could be between them.  

That was my second bad decision of the night.  Apparently, the cousin who was originally in my place is impossible to frighten and all of her friends worked at the Haunted House.  They had apparently counted to see where she was in line and had determined that somehow they were going to scare her tonight if it killed them.  Unfortunately, I was not her, but I was in her place...and scaring me would  not be difficult.

Most of the rest of the story is a little blurry.  I believe that was just because my brain  has tried to hide the trauma.  I'll tell you what I remember.

When we went into the house, I was first frightened by a person in a Barbie mask who was just standing there.  That's it.  I was terrified.  We progressed through the house and I tried very hard to keep my eyes closed and clutch the back of my cousin.  The second fit of terror came from someone wearing a skeleton mask who screamed in my face.  I was on the verge of losing it.  The third thing I remember, and what pushed me over the edge, was someone dropping from above me and grabbing my shoulders.

It was then that I could no longer breathe correctly.  It was also then that things became extremely blurry in  my mind.  

Somehow someone in the performance of the Haunted House became aware that I was not just like everyone else and enjoying my fright.  She crawled out of a casket and grabbed me.  Just imagine for a minute what this did to me.  I could hear her talking to me, but it had begun to sound like I was underwater and things weren't coming in too clear.  She told me not to be afraid, that she was going to get me out of there.  She buried my face in her body and the next thing I knew we were running through the house and she was screaming and hitting the tops of boxes and casket thingies.  "Don't Come Out!  Stop!  Get Back NOW!"  

I remember fresh air and lying on the ground.  I remember a lot of people around me and oxygen.  I also remember a lot of yelling of "You have to breathe!"  

Here's the real kicker.  The Haunted House was run by the Rescue Squad.  Yep.  The Rescue Squad.  Apparently they thought it might damage their reputation if I died lying there on the ground because of Barbie, a skeleton, and Batman.  

I do not know how long it took for me to begin to breathe normally.  I have no idea how I got back to the parking lot.  I don't even know if I went back to the family reunion or if I went straight home.  

I do know that I believe now that it's entirely possible to actually be scared to death.  I also know that I am not a Haunted House kind of person.  I'm a sit at home and watch heartwarming movies while drinking hot chocolate and thinking about unicorns and butterflies kind of person.  

We never spoke of the incident again, and my first Haunted House was also my last.  I have been asked many times to go, but my response to those people is always the same.

How Gum Taught Me About Justice

Little kids are funny.  Most of the time it's hard, as an adult listening to their breakdowns, to figure out why they get so upset about the things that bother them.  It seems like such the smallest things can throw them into complete meltdowns.  Things that don't matter, really, or at least not to adults.

That's because as adults we've already been through the trauma that those little things can cause us.  We've forgotten what it's like to be introduced for the very first time to some terrible truth.  At least we've mostly forgotten.

I remember one of those childhood breakdowns very well.  It was the very first time that I think I really understood the problem of injustice.  It was gum that taught me about justice.

I don't remember how old I was, but I know that I was very young.  Grandma was taking me to Granny's house to spend the day.  Everyone loved going to Granny's house.  It was a place of good food, all the sugary drinks you wanted, and a place where you heard beautiful words like "Yes, you can pick all the raisins out of the Raisin Bran box."  

But for some reason that day I didn't want to go.  I wanted to stay with Grandma.  

When we got to Granny's house, Grandma tried to persuade me to go inside.  She told me I'd have fun.  I still didn't want to go.  She told me she'd be back soon.  I wanted to go with her.  Then she pulled out her final weapon in her arsenal.  She dug through her purse and offered me a piece of gum if I'd go inside.  

My eyes lit up.  This piece of sticky goodness could be all mine, and all I had to do was go inside.  

I'm sure you understand, of course, that I could not pass up the priceless offer of gum.  To do so would have been completely unprecedented. I put the gum in my mouth and I went inside.

Granny told me that I could watch television, and I could watch whatever I wanted...at least until Older Cousin took notice and wanted to watch something else.

So there I was, sitting in the living room floor, watching television, delirious in a cloud of gum happiness, when Older Cousin came in the room. Older Cousin noted that I had gum, and she didn't.  Grandma hadn't sent her any gum, just me.  

She wanted my gum and I wasn't about to give it to her.  So, she decided what many children decide in those moments...if she couldn't have gum, no one could.  What she did next was almost unspeakable.

She tickled me.  

For me tickling is the worst kind of torture ever.  You're laughing, but you don't want to laugh.  I hate being tickled.  

Older Cousin tickled me until I swallowed my gum.  

My precious gum was gone!  I had been tickled and forced to lose my precious gum which was the only reason I had come to this place of torture.  I, of course, began howling and Granny came to see what was happening.  

Older Cousin told her version of the story while I cried.  I remember hearing it something like this: "She {lies...lies...lies} gum and I {lies...lies...lies} no gum and {lies...lies...lies}."  They were all lies, and even if they weren't lies, I had done nothing wrong.  I had been given the gum.  I was its rightful owner and had not been told I had to share it.  I was the victim and I had suffered the injustice of having my gum taken from me so soon after I received it.

To try and settle the case, my Granny dug through the drawer in her house where all things went when they had nowhere else to go.  She found a piece of gum.  There was just one piece.

Older Cousin said the gum should be hers because she had not had any gum.

I said the gum should be mine because I wouldn't be gum-less if it hadn't been for the obscene cruelty of Older Cousin.  

Then my dear, sweet, loving Granny did the unspeakable.  She turned into a dictator, a tyrant really, and not a very nice one.  She gave the gum to Older Cousin.  She told her she didn't have to share.  At the very least I should have been given  half.  There was no justice here...no justice at all.

Of course, watching my cousin pop the gum into her undeserving mouth was more than I could take and I began to wail.  Granny told me to go outside until I could control myself.  So I did.

I sat on the back step...thinking about the injustice that had been done to me and how Older Cousin was inside now enjoying her gum after having robbed me of mine.  The more I thought about it, the worse I cried.  

The neighbor, a nice old  preacher man, came over and asked me why I was crying.  I could tell him.  He was a preacher and interested in things like justice.  So I pulled myself together and told him my terrible story about gum and injustice.

He listened carefully, and then smiled.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out almost a full roll of Lifesavers.  He said he didn't have any gum, but if I would quit crying he would give me what was left of that roll of Lifesavers.  Furthermore, he said he would tell Granny that I didn't have to give a single one to Older Cousin and that I could eat them all.  He was a preacher, and Granny had to listen to him.

Now there was a man who understood justice...and apparently the breakdowns of small children.  

And THAT is how gum taught me about justice.

The Automatic Clock

I am not a morning  person.  In fact, that doesn't even begin to explain it.  I'm almost nocturnal, or I would be if people didn't insist on things being done during the day.  

I also have terrible luck with alarm clocks.  There are a million different ways that I've been late because alarm clocks failed to wake me up.  For now we'll just discuss one.

One year my dad got me a really great alarm clock for Christmas.  This magical alarm clock is automatic.  If the power goes out, the alarm clock resets itself when the power comes on.  It has a lot of other little interesting features as well...it knows the day and the date, you can set alarms to go off only on specific days, and it resets itself for Daylight Savings Time.

In theory...

For the first year that I had the magical clock, life was grand.  The clock took care of all my timing needs...but then something went wrong.

The clock began to get confused.  It didn't know what day it was...it didn't know what days I wanted the alarm to go off.  That I could live with.  I just set the alarms to off everyday and made sure to turn them off on the weekends.  That has never been much of  a problem.  The Daylight Savings Time, however has been a problem many times and it always happens pretty much the same way.  

I'm sleeping peacefully until I wake feeling refreshed and ready to go.  My alarm has not gone off.   I roll over and look at the clock.  It reassures me that my alarm has not gone off because I still have (at least) an hour to sleep.  So I fall back to sleep.  Then I wake up again.  Something is not right.  I do not wake up on any day that I have to be somewhere without the use of my alarm and at least five rounds of snooze.  

I usually stare suspiciously at the clock for a few minutes.  This will make it uncomfortable and it will admit to me what's really going on here.  

Ok, so actually it never does admit to me what's going on.  I usually have to spend a few minutes waking up and thinking about it before I realize that something has definitely gone wrong.  I usually go in search of my phone or computer to check that my clock is not lying to me and that I have just magically woken up when I needed to.  It's usually my phone that gives me the bad news.

The sheer shock of seeing the time displayed on the clock gets me out of bed immediately...but you can be sure that any day that starts that way is downhill from there.  

This morning was one of those mornings.  Apparently the automatic clock decided that Daylight Saving's Time would start two weeks early this time around...oh...and this time it would start on Tuesday.  

Happy Hump Day!