I love clocks. I love everything about them: I love how they look, I love how they sound, and I love the idea that I can actually know what time it is for even a second, because I have absolutely no time sense.

I don’t know how to describe it, actually. They’re just fascinating to me. At the risk of sounding like a lunatic, I catch myself gazing at them. Every time my mom’s cuckoo clock goes off I try to get the kids to see it and they just roll their eyes at me. I absolutely view “going to the clock aisle at Target” as a valid way to kill 30 minutes. My memory is pretty poor in general, but I still remember taking apart my first alarm clock. It was powder blue with like the old style bell on the top. I still remember what the grease felt like on the cogs.

As much as I enjoy modern clocks, mechanical clocks are vastly cooler than electrical clocks. There’s just something…steampunk about all those tiny gears. It’s endlessly fascinating to me that something can be so precise and detailed using only technology that we knew about a hundred years ago. It feels like magic.

So when you put all of this together, there is one type of clock that is the biggest, awesomest, granddaddy of them all (you see what I did there?): the grandfather clock.

I have wanted a grandfather clock for as long as I can remember. My grandma has one and it is just the absolute best. The sound is definitely part of it; those Westminster chimes give me chills.

Last year I decided that the only thing I wanted for Christmas this year was a grandfather clock. I thought maybe I could coordinate everybody, pool money, find someone to haul it, possibly find a clock repair person if necessary. However, as Christmas got nearer, and I started looking at used clocks online, it was a little overwhelming. So many choices. How do you know which ones are good and which ones aren’t? What if you drive to all over the midwest and all of the clocks are broken or something?

So I decided it was all just too much and grandfather clocks needed to just remain in the realm of dreams. Unbeknownst to me, Sara had already been contacting people and, long story short:

(Bonus audio on that video is because I told Alex you can count the chimes to tell the time…he made it to 19!)

It’s been about a week and I have not gotten tired of the chiming yet. Never has a clock been so fussed over. As soon as I get home I check to see if I missed it just chiming or not. I have fiddled with the pendulum several times to adjust the clock speed faster or slower, and I check it against my watch nearly every time it chimes to see if it needs further adjustment. I mean, obviously the newness will wear off at some point, but as of now my only regret is that the chime is not louder!

So that’s how I came to own a grandfather clock, and to have all of my wildest dreams suddenly come true!