Lose the Snooze

My husband and I have a recently-developed debate about the snooze button: he is in support of its liberal use while I think the function should be completely obliterated from alarm clocks everywhere. It is strange that this debate has only surfaced within the past few days as I have always fostered such loathing for the snooze button.

But then again, I am "one of those" who suffers in silence, who harbors those feelings of angst and frustration only to let them fly free after considerable buildup. I'm sure that if you asked one of my roommates in college if they knew this fact, they would probably shake their head in confusion. They, of course, were not excessive snoozers so I never had enough frustration to merit a discussion of the matter. My husband, however, is just such a snoozer.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm all for a few minutes of extra sleep. But I'm the kind of person who is realistic when setting her alarm. I consider exactly what I want to accomplish before I leave the house and set my clock accordingly. The fact that I have a pretty consistent schedule also adds to the ease with which I rise, thus eliminating the need for nine plus minutes of half-sleep. This is why it baffles me so that someone would choose to get an extra 18 minutes of sleep which does not really contribute much to their restedness and which actually makes them more tired when they finally do stumble out of bed. Why not go to bed 18 minutes earlier the night before? My huband insists that he can return to a deeper state of sleep immediately after flailing in the direction of the alarm clock, but I, for one, only lay in bed anticipating the sound of the snooze and do not get any more sleep. It's about quality, not quantity of sleep. And if I'm going to make the effort to hit the snooze button, I might as well turn off the alarm and get on with my life.

This problem, I believe, has only come about because my husband has been on vacation the past two weeks in order to work on our bathroom renovation. The first week of his vacation, I would wake up for work, quietly get dressed, then kiss him on the cheek before heading out the door. Two hours later, my husband would roll out of bed and proceed with his daily to-dos. This past week, he has tried to get back to more of a "schedule" before he returns to the working world on Monday. By this I mean setting the alarm for 7:30 when I get up and snoozing until 8 or 8:15. It's one thing when you're trying to sleep in the bed next to a snoozer -- I can usually sleep through that. But when you're trying to be quiet so they can keep sleeping, only to have the silence pierced by "BEEEP-beep-BEEEP-beeep," it is slightly aggravating. I never know if I should be loud after the snooze because he really wants to get up and will do so momentarily, or if I should keep quiet because he wants to sleep for another nine minutes. I just can't live my life like this.

To further complicate things is the fact that we share an alarm clock, and it resides on the (only) bedside table on his side of the bed. If I were to set my own alarm on my own clock on my own table on my own side of the bed, then perhaps we could have averted this crisis.

Or perhaps I'll just wait until he returns to his old routine next week -- without the snooze button.