The Wake-Up Call

Okay, one of the (few) positives of my job is that I can pretty much make my own schedule. Granted that I've always been a late-night person, I tend to work into the morning hours and sleep later than the average person.

This morning, the plan got thwarted.

I wake up to the sound of some awful buzzing noise. It sounds similar to what my alarm clock sounds like when it's set to "buzzer", but I never set it to "buzzer" because it's a horrible way to wake up.

I roll over and eye the clock on my VCR, which reads 8:27.

It then dawns on me what this noise is.

The next-door neighbor is mowing his yard. At 8:27am on a Tuesday.

And his mower isn't making the usual push-mower sound. Rather than a nice low rumble, there's a distinct scraping noise that sounds like the blade is making contact with something inside the mower. Hence, the loud buzzing noise.

I try to go back to sleep. Normally, I think I could sleep through a mower. But that scraping noise sounds so much like my alarm clock that I get that adrenaline-surge re-awakening every time I fall back to sleep, like I'm late for something important.

I may have to smack him up-side the head the next time I see him. You know, if I actually knew the guy.