Spring Ahead

Daylight Savings Time is an odd thing. We set our clocks ahead to allow us to take advantage of more daylight during waking hours. This shift is somewhat lost on me as I tend not to have normal waking hours and am often up during the wee hours of the morning. Also I don’t mind the dark. I actually enjoy the darker hours, finding them cozy, mysterious, and full of potential.

I do not like Daylight Savings Time.

I do not like having to reset the timekeepers on all our appliances – some of which require me to find the manuals to get it done. There are three in the kitchen alone (the stove, the microwave, the toaster oven), and then the two thermostats, the stereo and the answering machine. I am pretty sure the DVR and the computers reset themselves. And I haven’t even listed our actual clocks yet! There is a clock in the car, two in the bathroom, one in each bedroom and one in the living room. This task alone could take close to an hour.

I don’t like that I am never sure if I am supposed to show up at events that first day at the new time or the old time. What if the person I am meeting doesn’t remember we were to have changed the clocks the night before? What if I forget? How will my body know it is time for lunch? How many days will it take to get over feeling tired and cranky?

On the other hand, in the fall when we gain an hour, I find myself excited about the prospect of that additional hour. Like a gift certificate, the coming time change allows me to imagine so many different scenarios and I find myself “spending” the new hour on a wide variety of things. I could spend it curled up on the couch reading or starting to bake fresh bread. I could watch some old TV show or call a friend on the west coast to chat uninterrupted. While in reality the hour is most likely to end up passing while I get a little extra sleep (if I am lucky) or to be spent resetting all those darn clocks again, the gift of getting the chance to dream about how I would like to spend the newly fabricated time is worth it.

Maybe Daylight Savings Time isn’t so bad after all.