That time of year…
Ah, is there anything nicer than a shower, a nice relaxing stand under the warm water to wash all the cares and worries of the day away, with a nice cold drink on the ledge of the open window, with the moon shining bright and a few stars poking their way through the dark-bright firmament of the heavens to dance in the crashing warm water of my shower? Yeah, I know that’s the phone, but I’m relaxing here, and life is good. I know, it’s been 45 minutes, yada yada yada, conserving water, yada yada, fire department, yada yada, whatever. I’m in a good place. I’m clean, I’m relaxed, I’ll come out when I finish my San Pellegrino.
But even the best of times cannot last forever, and eventually I finished my drink and my shower and closed the window, and came out to talk to you, Gentle Reader. I know, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy.
One of the things I’ve been busy with is setting the clocks back. We have roughly seven hundred and eighteen things that tell time in our house, not counting the kids, who don’t so much tell time as ask it, and the cats, who are only accurate to within 30 minutes either way. So I tend to find “daylight savings time” to be a really annoying bit of bullshit. First off, we’re not saving any time. Even my kids get this: “Hey, if I cut the top foot off your blanket and then sewed it back on the bottom, how much longer would your blanket be?” “Stay out of my room, Dad.” Right.
Second, it’s not saving me any time at all. In fact, when I tally up how many hours of my life I’ve spent screwing around with pain in the wristwatches, car clocks that you can’t set without a ball point pen at 45 miles an hour, programmable microwaves that aren’t, universal remotes that are but shouldn’t be, and these wildly anachronistic circular thingies with multiple spinning sticks on them, to call it “savings” time makes me want to sue someone for false advertising.
Twice a year, we do this. Twice a year, all the dolphins in the world quietly snicker at us behind their fins.
Next year I think I’m going on a Stop the Madness campaign, refuse to change my clocks, and just show up late for everything. Or maybe I’ll just stay in the shower until they change back. That sounds nice…
The Occupy Wall Street crowd could take up the Stop the Madness campaign. Aren’t they still flailing around for a message?