I have always been a fan of Daylight Savings time. Seriously. I like the variety. The change in the routine. Every so often it gives me something new to shake things up and that’s a good thing. I never really understood why people complained about the change and acted like it was a big deal.
I was young and naïve.
This weekend, things were a little odd for me. My honey do list was long (and by honey do I mean, “honey, do.”) (And by “honey” I mean me. I’m single and live alone. Who else would I mean?) So I was a good little boy and I got up early to get started. I stopped by K’s Drive-way Sale (this is like a yard sale, only it was held in the drive-way instead) (just in case that needed further explanation) (which, I’m sure it didn’t) (but I wouldn’t want to take any chances.) Then I met with Michelle for Lunch (remember that comment in the last post about weighing in on Friday so as not to be affected by any bad behavior over the week-end? Yeah, I’m just sayin’) and then did about six hours worth of shopping. E-gads did I shop, and I didn’t get it all in. Groceries had to wait till Sunday.
I went home, put everything away, cooked and ate dinner watched a little TV and went to bed early. (And by early I mean it was still Saturday and not Sunday.) (No really, I went to bed early. In fact it was even before 11:00 when I went to bed.) I went to bed early because I knew it was the start of Daylight Savings Time and I knew the time was going to spring forward. (Can we really still say that when it’s no longer spring? I mean congress went and screwed with Daylight Savings Time and now it’s still officially winter according to the calendar and we’re moving the clock forward? So what, now it’s “winter forward, fall back”?)
I woke up on Sunday morning when my alarm went off at 8:30… Of course that was really 9:30 because I hadn’t changed the time on the clock yet. (Sidebar: I have three atomic clocks in my house and the only one that is not currently an hour slow is the one on my night stand and that’s because I manually changed it before I went to bed last night.) After showering and dressing I headed out to the grocery store where I was pleasantly surprised to see that I got all my shopping done in less than an hour and I got great produce. (I guess there’s something to be said for grocery shopping at 11:00 on Sunday Morning and not 8:00 on Saturday night. Yes that’s right, folks! I have a booming social life!) I was home by 12:30 and putting away groceries. My refrigerator is slightly larger than a thigh-high hooker-boot box, so this was a significant undertaking. I ended up rearranging the majority of the fridge in the process. I finished the groceries, whipped up a batch of banana bread (if you can call hand mixing a stick of butter and a cup of sugar “whipping up” a recipe), made a nice spinach and steamed shrimp salad (see, Salad!), and cleaned the house.
Since the DVR was clear of my weakly must-sees (shocking, I know!) I read for a little while before cooking dinner and then watched Iron Chef America while I ate.
Now, this post is not really about my activities in the last 52 hours (much to your relief I’m sure), the real point is that by the time Desperate Housewives was half over last night, I was fighting to keep my eye’s open. No fewer than three times I had to hit the rewind button on the remote because I had missed something that happened or something someone had said. And so the minute Desperate Housewives went off, I threw in the towel, knowing I’d never make it through Brother’s & Sisters. I went into the restroom to take care of the usual before bed business including brushing my teeth and reinserting my Invisalign.. aligners, and headed for the bedroom. And as luck would have it, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, wide awake, and thinking to myself, “Tomorrow morning is going to suck!” And that’s when it occurred to me, Daylight Savings Time is a cruel trick of nature or Congress or Benjamin Franklin or the Easter Bunny or Whoever! Why, in the name of all that is holy does the time change for Daylight Savings Time occur at 2:00 AM on Sunday morning? This is just cruel, particularly in March when the clock winters forward and we lose an hour.
Think about it. It’s Sunday morning and your alarm clock is going off at 9:00, only your body thinks its 8:00 and doesn’t want to get up yet. You force yourself to get up but your body is displeased and rebels for the first hour or so until finally it kicks into gear and goes with the flow. You go through your day and all is well until evening when your body is ready to call it quits from not getting enough sleep but it’s only 9:00 and you don’t want to go to bed too early because you know if you go to bed too early you’ll wake up in the middle of the night and then you won’t be able to get back to sleep until its almost time to get up and then you won’t want to get out of bed.
You do get up, because you have to be a responsible adult but your Monday is ruined because you didn’t get enough sleep and so you kill an hour or so at your office writing a semi-nonsensical blog post about the time change being bad and the whole thing could’ve been avoided if the time change just hadn’t happened.
Here’s what I propose. Daylight Savings time should begin and end at 2:00 AM on Saturday morning giving us the entire week-end to adjust, and not just one day. Then Monday will be just fine and everyone’s blog posts will make sense and all will be right with the world. Conveniently though, today is National Take a Nap Day and I think I’ll do just that! The end!
Riggledo 