I Hate Daylight Savings Time

After typing out that title, my mind started wandering. There is no cute little symbol I can use to replace the word "hate." I mean, there is h8, but since it's only two characters shorter, it's really just a piece of 1337 (leet) nonsense. If you love something, you have the heart symbol, after all, so there should be something like that for hate.

And thinking about that led my brain to remember something that my friends and I always used to talk about doing some day. We were going to go out and buy a mess of card suit stickers (and number 8's) and do some creative adjusting to the bumper stickers that people put on their cars. At the time--more than a decade ago at this point--people were terribly fond of reinforcing their feelings for whatever was special to them by posting it on their bumpers. Wives, children, dogs, cats, pretty much anything--MOST of them should have gone without saying, but the fact that they didn't surely said something important about the kind of people who found the probably permanent defacing of their vehicle necessary to prove to the world that they cared about something or someone. And, invariably, because it's cute, the message was spelled out with a "heart." I "heart" my wife. I "heart" my dog. I "heart" Willard Fillmore Magnet Schools. Whatever. Everyone was hearting things.

And we wanted to destroy that with stickers. Our plan was to keep a handful of clubs, spades, and number 8's in our pockets so we could cover up the hearts with something far more interesting. I "spade" my wife. I "club" my dog (clearly "baby seals" would have been the perfect one for this spot). I 8 my children. Hilarious! Obviously the "spade" my dog one we would have passed on since it might have been confused for an intended message. The possibilities were endlessly amusing to us.

But, unfortunately, we never got around to doing it, and now I almost never see people hearting things anymore. Another opportunity lost.

Anyway, on to daylight savings time. I think it's dumb. Everything about it makes me cranky. First, I lose an hour of sleep, as if I can spare anymore of those. Second, it gets dark an hour later at night, which makes it more difficult to get the kids to bed at a decent time. For the past six months or so, we've been telling Gabe, "If you wake up and it's still dark outside, go back to sleep." What other indicator of bed time could we give him? He can't tell time, so we can't say, "No getting up before 6:30" and expect him to have any idea what we mean. But here it is only March and already it's staying light until almost 8:00--his normal bed time. It will be impossible to get him to bed before 10:00 by June.

Oh, and I saw the obvious flaw in the "telling him to go back to sleep if it's dark" plan from the beginning--plus it starts getting light here around 5:30 in the morning by June, which makes matters worse--but, again, what else could I say? "If you wake up, and you don't hear Mommy and Daddy putzing around in the basement, then it's too early and you should go back to sleep." As if that would work.

Third, it wreaks havoc on the kids' internal clocks. Neither one of them knows what's going on with their bed times right now--they both FEEL that it isn't really bed time yet, so they end up protesting and fighting sleep until their old bed time has gone by as well. You'd think this would buy us an extra hour of sleep in the morning--after all, old 6:30, which is when Gabe usually woke up, is 7:30 now. No dice. He's still up at 6:30 for some reason--6:00 this morning, actually. Ugh.

And, finally, I hate daylight savings time because it's unnecessary. I don't farm. Nobody does anymore. So who cares when it gets dark at night? They should pick the time they prefer and stick with it. Either it stays light later into the evening, or, during the winter, it will be dark until almost 9:00 in the morning, but no more changing the time!

Stupid Ben Franklin and his practical nature. If I didn't respect him for being such an interesting historical figure (meaning, he did a lot of whoring), I'd hate him for his pragmatism. But tradition and his pragmatism is no reason for us to still be doing this at least a half century after it stopped being relevant.

That feels better. It's nice, from time to time, to rant about things you can't change.

Obviously the kids haven't been up to anything interesting, or I would have worked that into this post somewhere. Butts is finally starting to feel better, so we're all pretty happy about that. It's nice to have a quiet baby around the house once in awhile again.