Time

The word of the day is 'time', or perhaps it should be 'sleep' or lack of it. This business of changing time twice a year is perplexing. I mean what is the point? All it does for us is mess up our sleep schedules for a few days. I did some research and found out a bunch of details on it:

The whole point of daylight savings time is to maximize the amount of sunlight later in the day and lessen the amount in the morning.  It was the rocket scientist idea (did they have rocket scientists them or were politicians just as smart then as they are now) when Congress approved the time zones that the train schedules had been following since the 1880's. Who knew mass transit would force time zones? It is optional now and was only mandatory in 1918 and during WWII - as it is supposed to save power. In 1966 it was introduced nationally but not everyone follows it. It was moved to its current 'optional' schedule in 2005 to save more electricity. But there has since been a study that says it only saves 1% at most. That shows what a smart idea it really was.

Gee that's a lot of interesting factoids but it does not help cope with reality. Since last night was 'fall back' I am supposed to be more rested today as I got an extra hour of sleep. But I slept really badly last night and am up early thanks to the (damn) cat who wants breakfast according to his stomach, not according to the clock. And have you ever tried to train a cat? Today I am not more rested which I can only assume is due to (ever-so) slightly overdoing things yesterday. Tomorrow I will move into crabby.

Tonight my body will say 'stay up until the old bedtime' which means instead of going to bed at 930 or so (I am an early bird) I will want to go to bed at 830 which is the bedtime for 8 year olds. This means I will force myself to stay up later than my body wants. Tomorrow morning I should get up at 530, according to yesterday's time, but that means I will wake up before the alarm. This will cause lack of sleep and I will end up being crabby - too bad I have to go to work all day tomorrow.

Small children and pets do not understand this business of time change. Explain that to any two year old who's nap and bed time are an hour later than they think they shall be. The two year olds turn into space aliens. The pets become annoying.

I will go spend my day looking at clocks and timers and try to figure out if they are on old time or new time. It used to be you had to reset everything, but now with atomic clocks, the internet, and DVRs which display the time, some things automatically reset themselves. And if your spouse goes around changing the time on some things and you do as well, do you actually end with clocks in the old time, the new time, and the 'turned back twice' time? Its as if you were living in three time zones.

I'm not really sure if we are on daylight saving's time or standard time. I never remember which is which. I just know I will be tired, crabby from lack of sleep, and not really sure what time it is for the next few days.