What Time Is It?

I was so flipping mad on Saturday when Lauren first called to ask me if we had to move our clocks forward. She'd just caught part of the announcement on the radio so we weren’t certain. I must’ve been living in the clouds recently because that was the first I’d heard of it so I naturally assumed it had to be next weekend and pretty much forgot about it until later on in the night.

I really hate losing an hour. Okay, so it’s only an hour, but it really annoys me. I really like gaining an hour in the fall but losing one is a totally different story. I just feel so robbed! Not that I would do anything worthwhile with that hour to begin with if someone actually gave it back to me, but it’s the point that it was taken from me in the first place that upsets me. Plus, it also meant that I had to be back at work on Monday morning one hour sooner.

I wasn’t able to confirm that it was indeed the date of “spring forward” until Saturday night, as I was officially losing that precious hour and beating myself up for being up so late to begin with! Then of course there’s that whole week afterwards of having to ask yourself which clocks have been changed and which have not. What time is it really? Some clocks change automatically and figuring out which ones are correct always throws me for a loop. The phones at work switched automatically, as did my computer. Truth be told, my car clock will likely remain off by one hour until this time next year unless one of the kids decides to take action and fix it for me. My least favorite clock to change is the old cell phone that I use as an alarm clock. It’s set to military time and I will be double checking it for days while using my fingers to verify what time 17:30 really is.

My sister and I were chatting on the phone tonight as I was finally changing the cell phone/alarm clock to the correct time. It was 12:58am and I asked her to confirm that that would be 00:58 in military time. She told me just to make it an even 1:00am. She said it would just be easier to go with that. My argument was that I would then lose two whole minutes of sleep. She laughed. I was serious. Two more minutes of sleep is two more minutes! She said she sets her clocks ten minutes fast, as I know many people do. I had to explain to her that that little trick has never worked for me. I've never been one to fall for that or get anywhere earlier because I KNOW the clock is wrong. Why do people bother doing that? If you already know that you set the clock ahead ten minutes fast, aren't you going to leave ten minutes later than you should've? Hmmm, maybe if I trick myself I won't be late to work or school. Maybe I'll forget that clock is fast and leave ten minutes early and arrive on time for a change. Come on! Does that make any sense? All that means to me is that I have an extra ten minutes now and thinking about it slows me down even more.

I really do have more important things to complain about than the time change but it felt good to get it off my chest. I forgot to mention how upsetting it is to wake up when it’s still dark outside, as if I need another reason to want to sleep in later.