For the most part, the Coach and I have gotten along fairly well these 29 plus years. We've had our ups and downs, but being married to someone who is not particular about most things, is humble enough to keep learning, and wants to love me well? It's been amazing.
However, we may have reached the end of that bliss.
You see, the end of January sometime (the days have run together, you'll soon see why), our radio alarm clock died. The clock that's woken us both every morning for 20 something years. Now, it wasn't our FIRST alarm clock together. THAT one actually had a cassette player that turned on to wake you. It was incredible. We had this tape of an IMAX movie (remember those?) soundtrack from a movie on Africa that we saw on our honeymoon. That cassette woke us for many happy years.
Enter our last alarm clock - the one that just gave up on us. It was just a radio alarm, but it did the trick. His alarm on the left side, mine on the right. BIG snooze bar - very important. It even had battery back up and it wasn't too too bright. You know, just right. It was comfortable. It did the job well and we were used to which buttons to use to set it at night and which buttons turned it off in the morning and it was just bright enough to see the time when we woke too early (which happens more often these days).
I should have known the end was in sight, because sometimes when you would try to set the alarm, the time went backwards when you pushed the forwards button and vice versa. I should have seen it coming, but I guess I was in denial. Then one night, the Coach went to set his alarm for the next day and the button just didn't work. Nothing happened. It still had power, it still showed the accurate time, but we knew having a perpetual 4:45AM alarm wasn't ideal. For either one of us (me, especially).
So with a heavy heart, completely unsure of what the future would hold, we unplugged it for the last time.
Now, to tell the whole, whole story (which I'm sure you're dying to hear), you have to also know that the Coach and I have been really committed to following a budget since sometime last Fall. October, maybe? And WOW it's been tough. I won't say a lot about that, but just... the Coach is the bread winner in our home and I'm the bread LOSER. Big time. So it was extremely unfortunate that the alarm clock died at the end of the month. Because I'm not one to leave much in that "miscellaneous" category, if you know what I mean? Cough... cough... Amazon.
So here we are, our old faithful has passed on to the next radio alarm clock life. I needed to wait a week or so to order a new one. And the Coach? He has hard and fast rules about phones being in the bedroom. Just to clarify... we have 8 kids... or 12 kids... and 4 grandbabies. So SOMEONE has to have their phone in the bedroom. But it's not going to be him. Just saying.
But desperate times call for desperate measures and there we were ready to go to bed setting alarms on our phones for the next morning. Except his phone isn't in the room, so I'm setting alarms for BOTH of us for the next morning, knowing full well that I will be waking up both times and also have the priviledge of waking him. Yay.
No worries, though. We survived the interim, he relaxed on the phone rules and used his for the other nights and we survived. There was that one night he actually didn't set his, and woke up in a frenzy when MY alarm went off, but it is what it is. Here were are sometime later (February... new budget month) and the new clock has arrived. Never mind that I spent way too much time looking at the options and trying to make a decision... the decision was made and the delivery received and there we were.
With a completely different clock that has completely different features and the buttons are all in different places and suddenly I felt very... very... OLD.
Before you say (like my kids have a thousand times) that it's so much easier just to set an alarm on your phone? I know. You're right. It is.
But also, the Coach likes swimming upstream and honestly, he's usually right. We are too dependent on our phones and really even though I keep mine handy in case we are needed by one of our kids, I too like being able to look up and see the time on the clock. And getting out of bed to turn it off is a good thing for both of us. So he's not wrong. He's probably smarter than all of us.
However, learning a new electronic appliance with the added stress that if it doesn't work our whole routine will be off... has been a little annoying. At first I said, "You read the thing and figure out the stuff and then tell me how it works." I'm smart like that. But that only went so far, when he left me to set my own alarm and I realized I did actually need to know how to turn it off. Because he's already been up an hour before my alarm even goes off. Sigh.
But we're two nights in and so far so good. I even figured out how to make it NOT SO BRIGHT because that first night it kept me awake. Stupid clock. But we'll persevere though this trial - hopefully - and come out the other side better and stronger.
Yes... this is way too much about a tiny thing and this has all been ridiculous. We really have laughed our way through it. For the most part (I may have been a teeny tiny bit frustrated that first night when he didn't want to go get his own phone...). But we've been talking the last few months about comfort and discomfort and how we don't really learn much when we're just doing the things we're comfortable doing (blah blah blah marathon training)... and this silly clock as been a good illustration of how we easily get stuck in a rut, comfortable in our routine, just doing the same thing day in and day out and not really even seeing the things around us or taking time to be grateful or doing the hard thing or purposefully moving out of our comfort zones.
We'll make it with our new clock. I'm sure of it. Or at least more sure today than I was a couple of nights ago. Might take some time, but I'll get used to it. And I'm going to keep finding other small ways to step out of my comfort zone... go to that crossfit class where I don't know anyone... try a lift I don't really know how to do... find out if I can run a faster mile... go sit by that new person at that event... introduce myself to someone I haven't met... all things I'm SUPER uncomfortable with. All things that move me out of the familiar and hopefully into growth. And maybe the more I do these little things, the more confident I will become in the bigger uncomfortable things... having that hard conversation... choosing to be vulnerable, even though I might get hurt...heading into conflict instead of running from it... being willing to bear someone else's burden, even though I want to turn my eyes away from their pain.
So trying new things and getting out of my comfort zone? Bring it on. Just wait until March when my "miscellaneous" budget category resets, if you don't mind, please and thank you.
Happy Monday!
