Sunday, March 10, 2013

Explain Daylight Saving Time, Mr. Franklin



Mr. Franklin, you've done some crazy stuff, like those "fresh air baths" you insisted were so good for you when all you wanted to do really was stand in front of your front window naked.

And we all know about tying keys to kite strings and trying to catch electricity and who chases lightning in the hopes of getting struck??

But March 10, what you started with the setting of our clocks one hour FORWARD? You just couldn't get your naked self to the window fast enough so now, at 2 a.m., you've got us paying the price. That's just ... wrong. Selfish. We love our sleep. And on a weekend night especially. But now it's Saturday night and I'm so tired it's going to feel more like being unconscious than falling asleep, but first I have to knowingly set my clock ahead for something you've anointed as Daylight Saving Time? I'm supposed to have sweet dreams knowing I'm getting robbed?

As you get older, sleep doesn't just feel more like a cryogenic chamber. It becomes the time when free radicals within my system are being tamed;  I can feel my body restoring and repairing and replenishing. Sleep becomes my Oil of Olay.

And Benjamin has taken from me what I need more of, nature's Juvaderm. Time spent suspended in no activity is what I need to produce collagen -- the dermal filler and structural protein that plumps and smooths my creases and cracks. This is a serious matter. Beautiful, deep, restorative sleep -- and I'll be getting one less hour of it now.

For more salt in the wounds, I just found out tonight that a state can CHOOSE to participate or not in DST. Whaaaat? Yes, Arizona and Hawaii have just said no thanks. I feel like the day I found out I could have said no to the medical residents at our teaching hospital in that matter of an extra cervical check  (read able to check "saw ripe cervix of woman about to give birth" off their list of Things To Do To Graduate) when I was ready to deliver my babies.

I had no idea I could just say no.

We can say no to a lot of things, I keep finding out.

Why don't we say no? We have electricity now, we don't have to worry about a shortage on candle wax, Mr. Franklin -- and people don't quit plowing the fields because it's gotten dark out. Dark sky? Flip the switch on your John Deere tractor and keep on working. 

I'm with Arizona, no more messing with nature. Time is made the way it's made and our bodies have adjusted to it. All these tricks to fool ourselves and find extra light in our day, it doesn't change the amount of hours we have: 24.

I'm going to say no. On the outside, I'll go along with the rest of you because I have to, but the inside me is  saying no to Daylight Saving Time.

So many headaches come from it. Especially the biggest one, even bigger than losing an hour of age defying beauty sleep -- and it's this, a sound like fingernails on a chalk board: hearing Daylight SavingS Time. Said with an s after saving. Listening to that -- instead of Daylight Saving no S Time, over a hundred times today, is going to be hard to take.

Especially on one less hour of sleep the night before.

* * *





20 comments:

  1. oh i am feeling no so good toward franklin today...i stayed up way too late....regular bed time....and now feel it...

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    Replies
    1. Oh, B, sorry to be so graphic on a Sunday morning but my butt is dragging.

      If you were here, we could moan and commiserate over some coffee. My treat.

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  2. I don't understand why we still bother. I'm with you. Just say no.

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  3. I'm so glad we folks over in my part of the world don't have to do this time change nonsense!

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  4. It's my favorite day of the year! I'm serious! You just have to change how you look at it. Unless you have to set an alarm and be somewhere early on Sunday morning, then you haven't lost an hour of sleep, it was just later than usual when you woke up. The payoff? I get to drive home from work in daylight and still have some light in the sky when I get home. SO worth it.

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    Replies
    1. Reminding myself I love you, reminding myself I love you.

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  5. It's not Daylight Savings time already is it? I know we're off-sync, our two countries but it seems so early in the year.

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  6. Don't blame Ben, blame WWI, WWI, and the US Dept. of Energy.

    Honest.

    Damn Gument

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  7. Actually, you can't blame the US at all. Franklin wrote a satire about it, but DST was proposed first by a New Zealander and then by a guy in England. But me, I'm a huge fan. I love, love, love geting the extra daylight at the end of the day. If I had my way, we'd stick with DST year-round and not ever change back.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Yes! Never fall back!

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    3. I know, but Ben Franklin with his naked air baths was funnier. xo

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  8. As a Hawaii native, I never understood why everyone would just agree to "change time". Time is time - it moves forward in steady increments. You can't just change it! When I first moved to the "mainland" i refused to participate... but everyone got mad at me for missing all my appointments.

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    Replies
    1. I'm right there with you, but the world just won't let us march to our own beat. xo

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  9. Sleep is my anti-whatever-the-hell-short-circut pill.
    Who makes up these rules?
    Looks at America...
    We follow suit because it would be odd if the "kind friendly awesome hat" of America didn't match the suit or something like that.
    And I blame Oprah. Always Oprah.

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  10. I know some folks get really fired up about the extra daylight at the end of the day..yes, but I am tired then and have to make dinner, so it is best I am inside anyway. What I tend to forget is that it means we get thrown back into darkness in the morning---that is a cruddy realization at 6:15...um, daylight? you were just here the other day when the alarm went off...boo hiss DST! (I didn't want to risk saying the s)

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  11. Also Alexandra, I read that many fatal car crashes take place in the days following daylight savings. It really interferes with our energy and fatigue levels. Are we the only nutty country that does this??

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