What I used to love about changing from Daylight Savings Time back to ‘Regular’ time was the extra hour gained. For a week or so, I could feel like I was sleeping in every morning. Sadly, that changed when I had children old enough to sleep in their own beds.
Time is not something children understand. They refuse to be governed by it, and they flaunt their ability to be wholly unattached to the hands of the clock, mostly by refusing to stay in bed an hour later in the morning after the time changes. So much for sleeping in. What you end up with is a child standing at your bed at 6 a.m. demanding breakfast.
Of course, sometime in between jr. high and high school this will change. The “Fall Back” will come to mean something important to them. At least at an intellectual level, because children like to make up for the lack of sleeping-in done in their early years with an over-abundance of sleeping-in during their adolescent years. Time change or no time change, every day is a new opportunity to sleep late. This fact of life does not comfort me.
There are a few logistical matters to take care of with a time change. I still need to change the clock in our bathroom. We changed the clock in the kitchen right away so we wouldn’t be late, or early I guess (yea, fat chance), to church on Sunday. And actually, there are a few of our clocks still on Eastern Daylight Time. Yes. I know. I have a tendency towards nostalgia and sentimentality and despite the stories I could tell you of busy mom trying to get her house unpacked and ordered, it’s a little bit embarrassing, and may be a wee bit pathetic. But I will tell you nothing, if not the Truth.
Our cell phones access some almighty satellite in the sky that Knows, so they are always in the right time zone. Ben changed our alarm clock a few weeks ago from EDT, because he was tired of calculating when exactly he needed to wake up. “Let’s see. Five-thirty a.m. in Utah is seven-thirty in New York. It says eleven o’clock right now, and that means the majority of people here think it’s nine – bed time in an hour and a half, that gives me seven hours of sleep. Good deal.” I personally don’t see what the problem was but then again, I’m not the one getting up before 6 a.m. I mean, I wasn’t, until this past Sunday. Anyway, the alarm clock was changed and changed again.
So now’s the time. As long as I’m changing the time on my clocks, I may as well situate everybody here, well and good, in Mountain Standard time. At least most of my clocks. For a few months.
Time is not something children understand. They refuse to be governed by it, and they flaunt their ability to be wholly unattached to the hands of the clock, mostly by refusing to stay in bed an hour later in the morning after the time changes. So much for sleeping in. What you end up with is a child standing at your bed at 6 a.m. demanding breakfast.
Of course, sometime in between jr. high and high school this will change. The “Fall Back” will come to mean something important to them. At least at an intellectual level, because children like to make up for the lack of sleeping-in done in their early years with an over-abundance of sleeping-in during their adolescent years. Time change or no time change, every day is a new opportunity to sleep late. This fact of life does not comfort me.
There are a few logistical matters to take care of with a time change. I still need to change the clock in our bathroom. We changed the clock in the kitchen right away so we wouldn’t be late, or early I guess (yea, fat chance), to church on Sunday. And actually, there are a few of our clocks still on Eastern Daylight Time. Yes. I know. I have a tendency towards nostalgia and sentimentality and despite the stories I could tell you of busy mom trying to get her house unpacked and ordered, it’s a little bit embarrassing, and may be a wee bit pathetic. But I will tell you nothing, if not the Truth.
Our cell phones access some almighty satellite in the sky that Knows, so they are always in the right time zone. Ben changed our alarm clock a few weeks ago from EDT, because he was tired of calculating when exactly he needed to wake up. “Let’s see. Five-thirty a.m. in Utah is seven-thirty in New York. It says eleven o’clock right now, and that means the majority of people here think it’s nine – bed time in an hour and a half, that gives me seven hours of sleep. Good deal.” I personally don’t see what the problem was but then again, I’m not the one getting up before 6 a.m. I mean, I wasn’t, until this past Sunday. Anyway, the alarm clock was changed and changed again.
So now’s the time. As long as I’m changing the time on my clocks, I may as well situate everybody here, well and good, in Mountain Standard time. At least most of my clocks. For a few months.
I finally got around to changing our clocks, too. Usually they still have the wrong time from when DST starts, so when we fall back, they are the right time again.
ReplyDeleteI used to set my alarm clock really far ahead so I gave myself the allusion of sleeping in--weird, but it worked. (That was in college.)
And, when I look at the clock, I always say, "It's 10 here, 8 in Utah, and 7 in California." That way I make sure to include all the people I love. I've done that every time since I've lived on the East Coast.
I wish we could reset the kids internal biological clocks.
ReplyDeleteI hate daylight savings. Hate it. I wish we could just stay on standard time. It's very difficult to put a child to bed in the summer when it's broad daylight outside at 10 PM.. even if Lagoon makes a few more clams or whatever the stupid reason for it is... If they tell you it's for the farmers.. you can' ask my father-in-law and he'll tell you that it's not light at 2 or 3 AM when he's out bringing in the harvest.
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