Other people have a ton of alarms on their phone, right? I don’t mean a backup alarm to protect yourself from oversleeping, I mean a literal boatload of DING timers set for your day. I can’t be the only one who does this.

So let’s take a walk through my settings, shall we?

There are currently 45 alarms on my list. (Why do I feel like I’m admitting some shameful secret here?) No, they’re not all on, they’re just on the list. I actually deleted two yesterday so…yay?

Two are “set these if you have to get up at an impossible time” alarms. One is “Dance Like Yo Daddy” by Meghan Trainor (my standard alarm), the other is “Kiss With a Fist” by Florence + the Machine. I used to have another with “American Idiot” by Green Day but that one shatters the air like a jackhammer and it was a lot to face at 3am.

Two are standing alarms, one for weekdays and another for weekends, because I laugh in the face of all the science saying it’s best to stick to your wake time instead of sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAA. Anyway, I just toggle those off when I want to set a different alarm to get up in the morning. There are a couple of alarms on here for blogging reminders – one for linking my blog post to a challenge host website, one for sharing my link on social media, one just to remind me to open the damn laptop and blog…you know, the usual.

There are several task oriented alarms that I toggle on and off as needed. One to start the Roomba and one to complete any calls, texts, or emails I need to do. There’s one saying hey have you done your meal planning and groceries list? I have daily alarms for pet lunches and dinners (as if they’d let me forget), litter box cleaning, and one I trigger monthly for cat meds.

Sure, I have to have that one go off a few days running before having actually completed all the cat meds but…Bygones.

Right now, I have a Babbel reminder since I’ve been doing Italian refresher lessons. I have several alarms for texting for those “hey, tell Bear this over lunch” or “remember to tell the family that thing” messages. That’s particularly useful when I’m almost asleep at midnight and suddenly think crap, I forgot to say that thing to so-and-so.

There’s also a to-do list alarm, a get ready alarm, a leave in 15 minutes alarm, a cooking alarm, a bread ready in five minutes alarm…

I’m starting to see a pattern.

There’s the put the trash can out alarm that goes off every Monday night. There’s a put recycling out alarm that goes off every other Tuesday night; that alternates with the every other Wednesday alarm encouraging me to put heavy trash at the road for pick up.

There are no less than five — FIVE!!! — alarms in the late evening hours that have been my as-yet-unsuccessful attempt to wrangle my contrary self into a reasonable bedtime routine. Hope springs eternal, man.

If you’ve made it this far I am extremely impressed with your commitment to reading a post.

There’s probably something bigger going on here. I’ve always written it off as a tool I use to navigate the world but especially after laying it all out like this…well, even I can see this is excessive. Guess I’ll need to spend some time thinking on what’s going on here.

No, I’m not setting a reminder alarm for that.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “alarm.” Use it as a noun, use it as a verb or an adverb or an adjective, use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!