I will tell you what kind of talk sends me immediately to the kind of squirmy rage that makes me want to flail futilely at someone’s face: “Wait, it would be SIX o’clock, but now it’s FIVE o’clock, so it’ll be EASIER….wait, no, HARDER to…wait, no. Okay, it WOULD be six o’clock, but we CHANGED…”
I’m not saying I don’t start these very Daylight Savings Time discussions myself: I’m powerless not to, which makes me want to flail at my own face. And then I have to listen to Paul doing them and ALSO correcting me that “actually, it’s saving, not savingS, and actually that’s in the spring,” which he’s super-lucky hasn’t gotten him killed. PLUS, the kids get involved, so there’s the added bonus of having these discussions with people who are not understanding the concept at all.
Anyway, this has got to change. (CHANGE. See what I did there?) I’m not going through this again. Well, no, I’m going through it ONE MORE TIME, but this time I’m WRITING IT DOWN. Every time we do that stupid hour-math in the next couple of days and come to an accurate conclusion, I’m writing it down. Next year I will be able to copy this to a word-processing document, increase the font size, print it out, and hang it next to the clock. (Paul tells me I could also make a Google docs document so that ANYONE can print it out. I will work on this, so perhaps when we are looking for this post next year we will find a link to something printable.) (Ha ha, like I’ll actually follow through with that.) (I ACTUALLY DID FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THAT: Google Docs Printout.)
(changing from Daylight Saving Time back to Standard Time)
(“gaining an hour”)
It will be EASIER to wake up in the morning: you will feel wakeful earlier than usual. However, the children will wake up at a clock-time one hour earlier than usual, so you will actually feel THE SAME amount of restedness, except with the unpleasant feeling of resentment and injustice at the early time on the clock. If you have a teenager, he or she may emerge an hour before you would usually expect, blinking in confusion.
It will be EASIER to go to bed at night: you will feel sleepy earlier than usual. If you have a small child, you’ll be dealing with an hour of crankiness and sleepiness as their little internal clock tells them it’s sleeping time and you tell them it isn’t.
It will be HARDER to wait for meals: you will feel hungry earlier than usual. The children will be cranky and whining for lunch, and you will say, “OMG stop whining for food, it is only TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING.” Then you will sneak into the kitchen and have a little nibble because OMG HUNGRY.
It gets light EARLIER in the morning. This is kind of nice for waking up: the kids have awakened us at 4:30 instead of 5:30, but there will be less time sitting sipping coffee resentfully in the dark: soon we will be sitting sipping it resentfully in the morning light.
It gets dark EARLIER in the evening. This sucks right now, and the evening commute is depressing, but it will soon be nice for holiday light enjoyment.
People who forget to change their clocks will arrive places an hour EARLY. If you are having a party on the Sunday of a time change, you should make plans for early arrivers, just in case, and you should put a reminder of the time change on the invitations. If you have a church, it would be thoughtful to arrange to have someone there an hour early with coffee and doughnuts for anyone who otherwise is unlikely to want to wait around in the parking lot for an hour kicking themselves. If you have a store, same possibility as church, especially if you’re in a plaza with a bunch of stores: opening an hour “early” one day a year might get you some loyal and grateful customers browsing around while they wait for the rest of the stores to open.
If you want to prepare the children for the change ahead of time, don’t bother. Or if you must, you can spend the days before the change waking them up later and putting them to bed later.
See also: Spring Ahead (Daylight Saving Time)
This post just MADE my day and it has barely started yet (even though it really IS 8 am right now) JK. I think you should post this one as a note on your personal FB page. So hilarious. I’m going to read it throughout the day.
It is ALL SO TRUE. And the idea about the shop owners opening early is brilliant – I ALWAYS showed up for work an hour early when we “fell back”, and would have appreciated the shops across the street being open so I could browse.
I LOVE this.
So I woke up and thought: Ok, today I’m more tired than yesterday because my kids woke up at 7. No, 8. Wait. I’m actually more rested, right? Wait…
And then I found this brilliant post. And now I understand that even if I got more sleep last night, it doesn’t matter because I have kids. So I’m always exhausted. But at least I’ll know why my kids are starving at 10am. Right?
Or maybe I’m still confused. I need more coffee.
So funny, Swistle. I lol’ed over “sipping coffee resentfully”…
Awesome. Every word is true, and I’ve already found myself in the “It’s really 5:30 and not 4:30, but omg why do they have to get up at 4:30?!”
And you will feel like you have been awake FOREVER and when you look at the clock, it is only 8 am.
Before Elizabeth was born, I didn’t so much care about the time change. Now I hate it with every fiber of my being. It doesn’t matter which direction we go, it causes horror at our house.
my kids do that thing, “what time is it, really” I am mean and just say.”it’s whatever time the clock (which I have changed) says it is” maybe not because I’m mean, but because I get all confused! Now with a baby, I did NOT get the extra hour of sleep and am resentfully sipping my morning brew (hot chocolate in my case).
I totally forgot the time change and have been running an hour early this morning. Of course that means I was able to shower, make Monkey Bread for breakfast, and get chicken soup on the crock pot for after church. I’m going to be useless after lunch, but I’m feeling SO accomplished right now, darn it!!
Anyone want to take bets on whether I can get my 6-yr old to nap with me?
Yeah… probably not. :-/
Why do you people’s kids wake up at 5:30???? OMG I would DIE!
Boo kept her regular 7:30 wake up time with the time difference (I woke up like normal too) are we not affected??
I do do the “yesterday right now it was 10 but now it’s 11 right?” Thing all the time. It bothers hubby.
I grew up in a farm-town so “springing ahead” and “falling back” was all about the farmers. The extra hour of evening light in the spring/summer was for the purpose of giving them an extra hour of light to do fieldwork. In fall, after the harvest is done, they don’t need it anymore, so we can fall back to standard time. That’s always helped me keep it straight.
Then, I moved out of rural existance and learned there are also urban reasons to do this, such as office building energy efficiency. Whew knew? And who can keep that straight?
See! I suck at time change! I just realized I mucked it all up in my previous comment. At least I think I did?
Ah geez now I’m all confused.
I definitely need one of these printed out. And possibly a laminated notecard sized copy so I can keep it in my pocket.
I love you, Swistle! You’re a genius =)!!
LOVE this!!! Hilarious!! My brain actually does this conversion very quickly and easily for some reason….it is one of the only things my brain does quickly and easily these days, which is not very helpful, really.
Oh, and I just have to add (so that everyone can hate me) that my younger one slept until 8AM this morning (so really 9 AM) !!!!! He’s been sleeping in later and later each morning this week and the kid is either getting sick or he has some sort of natural internal clock that also falls back and hour in November. (And actually, he used to get up at 7am, so he is really off by about 2 hours now!)
I started reading this thinking “wth is she talking about?” and finished thinking ONCE AGAIN that you are the most brilliant of bloggers. Also, I woke my husband up at one a.m. last night because I was afraid my son had early hockey and my husband had forgotten about the time change (he didn’t and he hadn’t, but he appreciated the thought – he said, because he’s nicer than I am). Actually I never had THAT much to complain about because our kids sort of reset themselves in the week leading up to the time change too, but I do remember feeling thunderstruck and bitter when I realized that having kids took ALL the good stuff out of the fall time change and none of the bad stuff.
Thansk for the reminder – I had forgotten
I was sitting here feeling superior, thinking that I didn’t need this post, until it hit me that I bitched at the hubs eating before lunch was ready. Oops. Totally didn’t realize it was yet another casualty of the dreaded DST.
I wish you wouldn’t write things that make me side with Paul.
I probably shouldn’t mention that I think we should use the hyphen: daylight-saving time. Because, see, we’re saving daylight.
The fall change always happens around my birthday. The spring one always happens around my husband’s birthday.
This has solved all my problems with trying to remember which is which, because he complains regularly that I get an extra hour for my birthday and he loses one for his.
The time change always messes me up, and I find myself spending much time feeling slightly grumpy & out of sorts while resentfully sipping my caffeinated beverage of choice, and there is only one other adult & one dog who wants to eat at all sorts of random hours which leaves me doing all sorts of weird math having to do eith when I claim I will or won’t feed him until I’m like “WTH, self? He’s a dog. How about you feed him when he’s hungry & stop thinking you can work any sort of time change logic on him. Ohmigod, this day is taking forever, can’t it be bedtime already? Gah!”
So yeah, I totally need something like this to keep on hand so I can just point to it & use as few words as possible for a day or two…
So perfect! Can’t wait to see the springtime adjustments. I totally giggled and mm-hmm’d at the injustice of the early time on the alarm clock and the OMG HUNGRY. You nailed it!
Slim- He’s right, of course. It’s mentioning it (when it’s not necessary or important or kind to mention a correction if the statement has been understood and when it’s a twice-a-year-only mistake), and using that superior-intellect TONE, that makes me want to kill him.
Never, ever work in the church nursery on a daylight-saving day (I do like the hyphen Slim suggested). I was surrounded by 25 super cranky two-year-olds for two hours this morning and WOW was it bad.
Sipping coffee resentfully in the dark. Have you been staring in my windows?????????
CARRIE- Only for a MINUTE. From a nearby TREE BRANCH. What, is that suddenly NOT ALLOWED?
We were just talking about how today dragged on and on. We put the kids to bed way early because they have had a hard time getting up at 6 for the last few weeks. Hopefully , this will help. I don’t drink coffee, so I stand in the pantry eating their halloween candy resentfully.
This is totally unrelated to the current post but I am tto tired/lazy/fullofsoup to look for the original post…. I netflixed Can’t Get a Date and watched all six while the husband watched football. SO Funny!
Thank you for this. Just yesterday, AFTER our clock had been changed back and the clock correctly read 7:30, my husband said it was really 8:30 and this annoyed me to no end. I told him it was 7:30 and not to confuse the issue. And now that you have confirmed we are actually returning to standard time (I could never remember when we were on standard time vs. “savings” time). With this, I have even more evidence to present to him should he ever claim it is “really” an hour earlier than it actually is.
I’m still not used to pushing this change back from October to November. When did that happen – like 3 years ago? Nevertheless, my body still hasn’t adjusted to that.
You see, I get up at 4:30 to avoid dealing with the kids for a couple of hours. Near the end of October, I have a harder time getting up, because it is so darn dark and I just can’t wait to turn back those clocks.
Yesssssss. Can I politely request some sort of addendum that deals with pets? Something like:
“Obnoxious cat who usually meows an hour early for breakfast will actually wait until the correct time for ONCE in her life to wake you up, but due to the time change, will actually still be an hour early – SUCKS TO BE YOU.”
Totally so proud of myself for doing the gradual adjustment over the week thing for my 2 year old. It wasn’t until SATURDAY NIGHT when I had him down an hour early, at 6:30 that I realized I had been adjusting the WRONG WAY.
So I guess my 4:45 wake up call was payback for me being so excited about early bedtimes all week.
Le sigh.
I really enjoyed this post on Sunday, a day where I cut a deal with Hub to let me sleep in and not deal with it. Only Liv woke up early though, so lucky Hub.
Here is where I always catch myself on falling back. The night before at 10:00 PM: Well, it’s really only 9, so we can stay up a bit longer…
Also on Sunday, before I realized that I had forgotten to change the clocks in the kitchen, I had the kids showered and ready for bed before I even realized it was only 7PM. BONUS
“Then you will sneak into the kitchen and have a little nibble because OMG HUNGRY.”
HAHAHAHAHAHA.
(Yes, I’ve fallen so far back I’m 2 weeks behind in my reading.)
10 years later and I searched for this because AGAIN I can’t wrap my head around the “is it later or is it earlier”. Thank you for your service! :)