Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

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Lifestyle Kuel Life Contributor: Claudia Hufham

I don’t always hate Mondays, but let me say that the Monday after “springing forward” is the ‘mondayest’ Monday of them all! I think we can all agree that it should be a national holiday to give us one more day to adjust!

Seems everyone has their opinion about daylight savings time. Some love it because they get extra daylight, others don’t like it, because “losing” an hour has an adjustment period. My beef with it, well one of my beefs anyway, is why on a Sunday in the middle of the night? Why not on a Friday at about 4:00 pm? It would be much easier to get used to it if one of the perks was leaving work early and I had the weekend to get used to it. Just a thought.

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I Don’t Spring Like I Used To

The older I get, the more the “springing forward” seems to affect me and not in a good way.

The fall back, I”m good with. Who doesn’t love an extra hour of sleep? But, is it really an “extra” hour? It’s really just the hour I lost six months prior. I don’t even mind that it gets dark earlier. Any reason to get into my pajamas sooner on a cold day is ok with me!

I don’t think that I am the only one who has trouble with the whole time change. Surely there are others who panic when you sleepily walk into the kitchen and the clock on the stove says it’s 6:30 when you were just sure when you looked at your phone it said 7:30. It just throws me off for a minute, until I remember, oh yea the time changed.

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The Repercussions

Then there’s the whole thing with getting all the clocks in your life to display the correct time. My cellphone is good. The magic happens all by itself. The clock on my wall in the living room, I just have to take off the wall, find the little thing in the back and turn it in the correct direction. The clock on the stove, well I may need a masters in engineering to get that clock changed and the clock in my car, forget it, I’ll just wait six months and it will be back on the correct time.

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Research also indicates that fatigue, traffic fatalities, and the chance of a heart attack or stroke increases in the days following the time change. Thank goodness I can only complain about being tired, but again, give us one more day to adjust would ya?

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A Resistor

I’ve discovered over the years that I am a “resistor” of change. I’m not sure if that’s an inherited trait or one that I manufactured myself, but I usually fight change with everything I’ve got. Even though I know that eventually, I will get used to the change, I learn to live with it and most of the time end up happy that it happened. None of that keeps me from resisting.

The whole time change thing is no different. I dread it and then once it happens I spend the first week thinking “‘Hmm it’s 4pm, but it’s REALLY only 3pm.” I am tired because it messes with my sleep, (day two is worse than day one) and this year it’s a full moon and Friday the 13th, not that I’m superstitious, but I’m pretty sure I don’t stand a chance here!

The good news is, I know that within a week or two, it will be as if nothing ever happened and I will be enjoying the extra daylight. It’s also a sign that spring is around the corner and boy could I use some warm sunny weather! You know you need some vitamin D when your doctor just looks at you and says, “I bet you need some vitamin D!” My pale skin told her everything she needed to know. She was right.

Don’t Fix What’s Not Broken

It does seem strange to me though that we have to mess with the time. Aren’t things messed with enough? Why do we have to add to it? I think the whole thing started in order to save energy. So now it’s darker in the morning and light later in the evening, but before it was lighter in the morning and darker in the evening. As a very wise native American said. “Only the government would think that you could cut off a foot of the top of a blanket, sew it to the bottom of the blanket and think you have a longer blanket.”

To add to the confusion, some states participate in daylight savings time and some don’t. Which adds another layer of “what the heck?” to this whole springing forward thing.

Years ago, I was working in a little town in Indiana, on the border of Michigan. My hotel was right over the Michigan border. At that time, Indiana did not participate in daylight savings time, but Michigan did. So even though I could leave my hotel and be in Indiana in, oh I don’t know, 30 seconds, they were an hour a part time wise!

What Time Is It?

The first day I was there, they explained that where my hotel was located was on DST. As I drove to the hotel the first time, I watched the clock as I hit the state line. It made me chuckle to see the clock on my phone flip instantly to a new time. I had lost a whole hour in a matter of a split second. On the other hand I’d get it right back when I go back across the state-line.

I needed to be there at 9, so I had to do a little math. You know those word math problem kind. If I needed to be there at 9am their time, that meant I needed to leave at 9:30 my time (which was 8:30 their time). Do I even need to say I was messed up ALL WEEK? At the end of the day, they said “We will start tomorrow morning at 9am.” I had to clarify, “Is that YOUR 9am or mine?” It was a long week of not ever really knowing what time it was.

Is anyone else singing that Chicago song in their head? ”Does anybody really know what time it is does anybody really care”

Like Sands Through The Hourglass

Time is a funny thing isn’t it? When you want it to go by fast, that clock moves like molasses in a deep freeze. When you need it to go by slowly, like Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it feels like you go to bed on Friday night and wake up and it’s Monday again. Or, when you are on vacation. To the people stuck at work the time is creepy along, but to you it’s flying by way too fast.

I really thought it would take longer to grow old!

You always think you have more time and then all of sudden you don’t. It’s easy to waste until you realize that you don’t have as much as you once did. So instead of worrying about losing an hour and waiting to gain the hour back, I will enjoy spending the minutes in between doing something that makes me happy and keep my gripes about the time changing to myself!

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About the Author

Claudia Hufham is a blogger, mom to two grown kids and a Boxer/American Bulldog, who found herself looking for a new career at age 59. In her quest to reinvent herself and save her sanity, she started a blog. Her humor and down to earth story telling of her life lessons have led her to be featured on sites like Feedspot.com. You can read more from Claudia at Claudiareinvented. You can follow Claudia on her Instagram and FaceBook Page as well.

Claudiareinvented is featured on Feedspot as one of the Top 10 Women Over 50 Blogs