The Daylight Savings Time Conspiracy

As you hopefully know by now, this past weekend most of us took a few minutes of our time to set our clocks back an hour. We did this because of this event that happens every year called Daylight Savings Time. And anyone who knows me well knows that I can't stand Daylight Savings Time.

After setting our clocks back an hour a few days ago, we will now wait a few months and then do the exact opposite. Seems kind of pointless to me! So basically the whole country - other than Arizona and Hawaii - walks around jet-lagged for a few days in the fall and again in the spring. If I want to be jet-lagged, I'd much rather take a jet somewhere and have a nice vacation! I think Arizona and Hawaii have the right idea about not participating in Daylight Savings Time.

Some people claim that they actually like Daylight Savings Time because they get an extra hour of sleep in the fall. I'm guessing that these people don't have children. See when you have children, the exact opposite happens. Here's what happened in our house over the weekend... Alec and Chase are both, for the most part, really good sleepers at night. Bedtime is around 8pm, and they usually sleep until between 7:30 and 8:00 the next morning. Perfect! But enter Daylight Savings Time. We kept them up until 9pm on Saturday, because really it was like the new 8pm. So they were extra cranky for the last hour of the day but then fell asleep right away. I can deal with that. But they're kids. They don't have a clue what Daylight Savings Time is. So the next morning they thought it was 7:30am and time to get up. But really it was now 6:30am. So I've kept my kids up an hour later, I've stayed up later myself, and now we're all up an hour earlier. I probably don't need to tell you what kind of mood we were all in on Sunday! This routine will continue for a few days until slowly we all start to adapt to the new time.

Children are creatures of habit (at least my children are). And I have to admit that I like to stick to a routine as much as possible too. But Daylight Savings Time just throws routine out the window. And then there are the people who forget to change their clocks and end up being late for something important. Or the college kids who set their clocks in the wrong direction and end up being two hours early to their class (not mentioning any names here Chad...). And don't forget about all the people who now have to drive home from work in the dark. I'm really finding it hard to see why we need to deal with this!

If I could see one reason why Daylight Savings Time is so great, I might not have such a bitter attitude toward it. But right now the only positive thing I see about it is that it gives some people an excuse to check and/or replace the batteries in their smoke detectors (have you checked yours?). But it would be just as easy to use another day to do this bi-annual task, like maybe a birthday or Labor Day, or maybe even a National Check Your Smoke Detector Batteries Day. Maybe we should ask the people in Arizona and Hawaii when they change their smoke detector batteries. Anyway, I digressed...

There's not really anything I can do to change Daylight Savings Time, so for now I just like to complain about it. In a few days I'll get used to it and forget about it until spring. You can be sure to hear more about it then!

My next Mommy's Always Write topic: Guess what I did today? (The answer may shock you!)