Daylight Losing Time

Daylight Savings Time ended last night. Which just smacks of irony in our house. See, these two small children have no understanding of the "fall back" principle. And neither does their mother. So we all ran our schedules an hour behind yesterday, went to bed an hour late, and woke up this morning at 5:15 like usual. Er, make that 4:15 today. I'm already feeling frighteningly off rhythm.

This brought up an endless conundrum in our wedded bliss. B is a night person. I am a morning person. Since we usually only get a limited amount of time to spend together--that's in the evening, during that tiny little window after the kids finally fall silent--we stay up late to maximize that time. And in all practicality, if we were to get up early instead of staying up late, the kids would be bound to wake up early too, wondering why we were just hanging out them and how soon we could add pancakes to the mix. So we stay up late. And B sleeps in. And sometimes I sleep in too. But not often enough. My body just doesn't work that way.

So you throw an hour lost in the evening plus the hour lost in the morning, and I'm tired. And cranky. And wondering why the word savings is involved at all. And bitter at all the people raving about getting that extra hour of sleep. And curious at how other couples negotiate the dicey dance between time spent together and time spent getting much needed and long overdue rest. Because I'm feeling like the music runs to the tango and I'm moving to the polka.

And I'm yet to figure out the positives of this whole time shift. Our after-dinner walks are nearly impossible in the pitch black, the kids want to wake up when the sun comes up anyway, and the dark-early days make me want warm and indulgent comfort foods like meatloaf, stews, and apple pies. Which, okay, sound yummy. Score one for daylight losing time.