Time in a Bloggle

The cheery newscaster informed me cheerily this morning that I need to remember to "Spring Forward today!!". She is far too happy about this, possibly because she has to get to work at half past something insane every morning and therefore enjoys the torture of the rest of the country, at least one day per year.

Yes, I will admit the truth right here in public: I do not like Daylight Savings Time. Further, I have never once "sprung" forward, preferring instead to "trudge resentfully and whinily" forward, knowing absolutely that I will be losing sleep and engaging in numerous tragic knitting accidents as my internal clock reluctantly attempts to catch up.

Okay, so I recognize that the origins of DST go all the way back to America as an agrarian, un-mechanized society, when there was a desperate need for extra daylight hours if all the work was to have a sheep's chance at a knitting convention of actually getting done. I get that, I do. But that we still do it puzzles me mightily. For one thing, it really doesn't sound like an official sort of thing.....it sounds more like something a drunk college student might come up with, as in "Ohhhh...crap. It can't be midnight already! I have a 7 am class and I still have to go home. Wait--I know...let me just mess with the clock...there! Now it's 11 o'clock! Cool--oh, and hey--now I have time for another beer!"

I think it's worse now that they're making us set the clocks ahead even sooner. I've only just started to get a bit of light in the mornings when I leave for school and it's being snatched away from me again, thus assuring that I will arrive at school looking like nothing so much as a mole or a boiled owl, blinking stupidly in the fluorescent lights as I try unsuccessfully to scuttle for a darkened corner. (Did you know that the people who run the school have a problem with my attempting to curl up in a darkened closet upon my arrival? I say they have no real appreciation for whose tuition dollars are paying their salaries.) I've tried to get the teachers to teach by candlelight, the better to ease me from dark to light, but Chemistry is my first class and Dr. L seems to feel that open flame around chemicals is a bad thing. Some people have no sense of adventure. You know, now that I think about it, she's somewhat suspiciously perky, too......

Arizona and Hawaii...now they get it. They just refuse to play this particular game and I feel duty-bound to point out that neither state has exploded, burned to the ground, or had all its citizens sent swiftly to hell. Mr. K tells me that my unreasonable dislike of time manipulation is not a good enough reason to move to either state (neither, apparently, is my equally unreasonable desire to wear a grass skirt to work) so I'll just have to try to convince the legislature of my state to get with the program....or without the program...or something. (See, my brain is already working in an inferior fashion in ANTICIPATION of this time change! And no, let's not ask the question about what sort of fashion it was working in prior to that. Some questions are better left unanswered.)

Then again, the muddling of my brain as a direct result of playing recklessly with time pretty much assures that I will be incapable of leading any sort of Daylight Savings Time revolt, or even of writing a coherent letter to my congressperson (let's see...the stamp goes....um...let's see, I used to know that....). It must be all part of the same nefarious plan--you know, the one that includes having me wake up at what feels like O'Crap O'Clock to get dressed in the dark (another good reason for not having strong light at whatever location I'm going to, by the way. A woman can only take so much humiliaton, and arriving at a public place wearing shoes of two different colors and a bra on the outside of her sweater just really pushes that envelope).

Did I mention that I really don't want to set my clock ahead tonight? I did? Oh. Okay. I ranted, too, huh? Yeah, sorry about that. It's that perky newscaster's fault. I'm not sure how it's her fault...but it can't be normal to be that perky after getting up at 3 am, so she's probably a pod person so it's okay to blame her. Or so my dreading-time-change logic goes. I'm telling you, People--messing with the Time-Space continuum stuff can only lead to heartache. (I have no idea what that means....but doesn't it sound impressive?)

Mr. K has decided to attempt to soothe the savage wife by taking me on a day date today. We'll be going to one of the places we went while we were dating, which is a bit of a drive but well worth it. I'll try to take some pictures of Puget Sound for you, as the place we're going is right by the ferry dock. See, I'm calmer already.

In case this doesn't work, though, you guys in Arizona? You may want to think about making up a guest room for me.