Having a Bad Time Change?

It is already 11 a.m. Where did the morning go? For starters, where did that hour go? You know, the one we lost Saturday night. At the time, I thought, "Big deal. One hour. It'll be barely noticeable. We'll enjoy the extra hour of sunlight. Nothing else will change. We fly to Boston and back and are fine. So shall this be fine."

Wrong.

I should have paid greater attention. At one point Saturday night, as I went around thinking I was setting all of our clocks forward an hour (I missed two), I flashed on the time, in seventh grade, that I was up until 2:35 on the first Sunday of daylight savings time, unable to sleep. But, I figured, even if it's a problem, it will be fixed by Monday.

Wrong again.

The first sign of panic begins Saturday night, when you're lying in bed reading and look over at the clock to realize that it's suddenly 1:30. Which means that, even if you get 8 hours of sleep, you won't wake up until 9:30, which is actually 8:30 and far too early to wake up on a Sunday when you have to get up at 7 from Monday to Friday.

But wait. On Monday, 7 will actually be 6, and it'll be dark outside, and I can't think of a more miserable way to start a day than to wake up when it's still last night.

In Arizona, they don't have daylight savings time, which means that my parents called on Sunday at their usual time, 10 a.m., which was actually 9 a.m. Yes, I am often still in bed when they call, but generally, I've been reading for at least a half hour by then. Not this time. This time it was only 9 a.m., so I was still asleep when they called, having some weird dream about traveling through time with Roger A. Hunt and the Legendary Dr. Bandeau to see Led Zeppelin's first show ever, only a fight breaks out and someone starts firing a gun, sending the Legendary Dr. Bandeau scurrying toward the action in a completely predictable show of bravado while I cower in the corner, rationalizing that it is much smarter to cower in this situation.

So to go from that volatile yet virtual world to answering specific questions about our plans for Spring Break was a little confusing. Give me that extra hour and I would have been golden.

And then, of course, there is the weirdness of eating lunch an hour early, convincing yourself that it is time to for your only twice-weekly now Coke when it is in fact only 11:00 a.m.

Sure, there's the upside, especially when San Francisco decides to bless you with abundant sun and warmth, which, since it is so unexpected, you try not to blame on global warming. You don't have to, actually. Someone will do it for you. The upside is that now you can sit on the front steps and drink a Margarita at 6:30 and it will still be light, and if you're lucky, Shack will be a good dog and sit quietly on the steps next to you, rather than running into the street or barking at everyone who walks by.

Skip forward to 10:30, when everyone in the house who is usually asleep by now is wide awake, wondering why they can't get to sleep. This comes after a difficult and combative weekend, so the angst of the individual who cannot get to sleep is tinged with an edge of hostility. Finally, at 11 o'clock, I summon up what remains of my parenting skills and say enough of the right things to put this individual at ease. Naturally, he falls asleep shortly afterwards.

Not me. I'm up until about 1, reading, not reading, remembering slights from years before, both committed by me and aimed at me. Anything long-buried surfaces, giving me plenty to think about besides the frustration I feel at lying in flannel sheets on so far the warmest night of the year.

And then, the misery that is Monday morning when it occurs on Sunday night. Sandra Bullock, who never met a morning she didn't like, is peppy as always, which makes it worse. The Jawa, who launched himself into my bed at 6:30/5:30, has a mood to match mine. Every thing either of us does annoys the other. He twists our sheets into a ball, making it twice as hard to make the bed. I nag him to get dressed, when he wants to play with Shack.

I look in the mirror. My face is twice its normal size and contains lines I don't remember seeing there before. Which is frightening, because the light in there isn't so good, given that it's still last night pretending to be this morning.

In a few days, I am certain, we will be fine. Adjusted. We will come to appreciate the longer afternoons, and memories of the dark mornings will eventually fade away. Just in time for daylight savings time to end. And then we get our hour back.