I finally found a solution to my oversleeping problem: The Ultimate Alarm clock.

The Ultimate Alarm is not cheap: Delivery alone weighs in at thousands of dollars, and ongoing maintenance is pricey, too.

Nor is it compact, weighing in at 30-plus pounds.

It’s snooze button no longer works, but that’s its most effective feature. It’s impossible to ignore a 3-year-old bouncing on your chest at the crack of 7  every morning and pouting, “I want bwekfas.”

I know you’re crying crocodile tears for a person who has to be rousted at 7.  I don’t seem so slackerish, though, when you consider I rarely turn in before 2.

My stepdad never got that when I was a teen either. He’d bang – loudly – on my bedroom door at 8 every Saturday. For him, that was practically midday. For me, who often worked until midnight, it fell into the category of “some ungodly hour.”

Which is why Boots’ daily wake-up call falls into the category of “helpful, but highly annoying.”

Relying on a regulation alarm has never worked for me. When it comes to ignoring them, I’m in the Narcolepsy Hall of Fame.

My last college apartment had no electrical outlet near my bed, forcing me to park the clock across the room. Good, I thought. I won’t oversleep now, because there’s no way I can get up, hit the alarm and go back asleep.

I seriously underestimated my abilities. Within a month, I was walking a marathon’s worth of miles every morning: Bed to clock to bed to clock to bed, repeatedly.

I later added a dual alarm to the routine. Figuring out which button to hammer to stop the noise was a challenge for a while, but not long.

Next, my cell phone became part of the regular programming. That worked for almost a year and a half, but now even the ability to change the ring tone weekly doesn’t  help. Lucky for me that Boots is consistent and insistent.

Until recently it was possible to hit his snooze button.

After a few early months of freaking out every time the baby monitor squawks, you learn which cries are real and which are mere grumbles that the baby will work out in a few minutes.

Even after he moved to the big-boy bed and started his night-stalker routine, it was possible to resettle him quickly.

Not so at all in the past few months. He must be going through a growth spurt, because when he wants to eat, he wants to eat now. Woe is me if I try to convince him otherwise.

On the bright side: I’m no longer oversleeping, and I never have to worry about the alarm’s battery backup failing.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

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