8:52 PM

Every night at 8:52 the alarm on my stop watch goes off. Every single night.

I don't wear this watch unless we are out running so it goes off every night while sitting in my jewelry box and it is loud enough to resonate through our small old house.

It drives our evening and overnight guests absolutely crazy. I seem to recall one night my mother-in-law asking what it was, we told her and within the same 22 second alarm it bugged her so much she asked again.

When I first bought the watch, it took all the patience I had to figure out how to even set the thing properly. I was just happy that I got the time to plug in correctly while holding down the upper right and lower left buttons at the same time while touching my tongue to my nose, but it wanted me to adjust the date and the day too?! I like watches that all you have to do is pull the knob on the side out and then turn it until it's the right time on the right day. Whoever came up with these sporty digital watches must have been smoking crack. I don't know why I find it so difficult to set them but once the alarm on the watch got set, there was no going back. I lost the piece of paper that tells you how to set an alarm and how to turn it on and off (i.e. instructions) and have just decided that we will have to live with the 22 seconds of beeping that will occur every night indefinitely.

I have no idea why I would have set an alarm for 8:52 in the evening. There is nothing of importance that ever occurs at that time, nor do I have a routine that I do when it goes off. It just goes off, and whether we are eating dinner in the dining room, watching re-runs on television or cleaning the kitchen it doesn't seem to make a difference to the time keeper. The watch wants me to know that it is 8:52. The beeping doesn't bother me, in fact, I rather like it. It gives me a benchmark for the evening and gives a strange sense of comfort by letting me know that until that battery dies I will always be reminded that it is 8:52 pm. It's a good thing to know, what time it is, right?