Daylight Savings Dilusion

This past weekend was daylight savings time. I am aware that some states in the country do not participate in this brilliant tradition, but I happen to live in one of the forty-eight that does. It is really quite an amazing phenomenon where you go to bed one night and while you are sleeping you "gain" an hour of sleep. Do you really "gain" an hour of sleep? Can you really "gain" an hour of anything by simply turning your clock back by an hour? Next time you are talking about "gaining" or "losing" an hour in the Fall and Spring you should talk to the parent of a young child. Kids do not understand the whole daylight savings thing. They simply wake up when their bodies tell them to wake up and go to sleep when their parents tell them it is night time. Our two precious little ones awoke on Sunday morning at 6:00 am. Their bodies communicated to them that it was in fact 7:00 am, their typical wake up time. My wife and I had to gently educate them on the fact that it was still "nighttime" even though it looked exactly like it did the day before when it was "morning time!" Kids just cannot wrap their minds around such an obtruse concept. I am not attempting to dig up the history of this madness, just make a few passing comments about how this affects the majority of us who have children.

Sunday night I had the pleasure of working the 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm shift at work. Now I am not complaining about the fact that I missed out on the previous nights overnight shift where Stephen had to work an extra hour. I am however commenting on the fact that the day after daylight savings is always a difficult night to stay up, especially when you have kids. One of my duties at work is to lock up the tennis/soccer complex on campus at dusk. Well since we had rolled our clocks back it was prior to dinner that I had to make this happen. As I locked the gate I thought to myself, "my it sure feels like it is about 9:00 pm." I am really a fan of the extra hour of light in the morning, but the nights can become very long and depressing for those of us who live north of I-90. Since I am a morning person I welcome the extra visibility on my morning runs, but is there something we could do about turning up the thermostat along with the turning on of the lights? Just a thought!

Soon the whole time change will be a thing of the past and we will not even think about it, but in the week that follows it sure can throw your entire biological clock off. Well, just like any other changes that happen in our lives we must adapt, adjust, and just keep moving forward with our lives!