By Alex Iwashyna, blogger at Late Enough
I hate Daylight Saving Time.
I don’t need extra day light in MARCH. If anyone needs it, it’s in THE WINTERTIME.
Seriously though, can’t we just accept the light and sun and time as is? WHY ARE WE MESSING WITH TIME?
My kids are already circadian-rhythm messes.
Like a prelude to the horror that awaits us these upcoming months, my son refuses to go to bed on Saturday night. We try bribes, stern looks, threats, dances and good cop/bad cop. Finally, we accept that we are faced with carrying him upstairs screaming and barricading us into the room or turning off all the lights downstairs and doing bedtime with my daughter.
We choose the latter. (At least we’ve learned SOMETHING in our last four and a half years of parenting.)
He comes upstairs a few minutes later. (See how awesome DARKNESS is?) We get the kids settled into bed, and I begin to dread the inevitable.
Because, with Daylight Saving Time, I have no choices.
Night people CANNOT go to bed earlier. We are programed to stay up. The last time I fell asleep at 10 p.m., I was dying of some preschool-induced plague.
And as the days get longer, my children’s 7:30 bedtime will be a tortuous event of But it’s not nighttime! topped off with their small faces pressed to glass watching our neighbor’s children run around for another hour until the sun sets.
I can’t exactly move to Arizona for the summer. My kids have olive skin and no paperwork.
So I’m stuck with this ill-conceived plan to use less electricity.
As I get into bed on my last night of the CORRECT TIME, my husband turns to me: We should’ve gone to bed earlier! It’s daylight saving tonight!
DO YOU EVEN KNOW ME, SCOTT?
I finally fall asleep and am greeted by thirteen nighttime wake-ups, including my own having-to-pee, which makes me feel like an overactive bladder commercial. {sigh}
And suddenly, the kids are wide awake and NOISY.
I peek at my iPhone to see what ungodly hour it is.
Normally, this would induce celebrations. Perhaps donuts.
Instead, I think: LIAR!
It’s merely 7 a.m.. And while that might be slight sleeping-in for my children, it’s no 8 o’clock. It’s no celebratory donut run. It’s 15 extra minutes, which, to a non-morning person like me, is water torture.
We are a nation built on lies.
SLEEPY LIES!
And I, for one, am tired of it.
