is time really relative?

so today . . . is the day we change our clocks to go back to standard time from daylight savings time. usually it means an extra hour of sleep for me. it is my favorite day of the year--except maybe for christmas . . .

i love to sleep, but i don't get to sleep as much as i would like to.

this is partly due to the fact that i have a real job where i have to get up every morning and punch a time clock--which precludes sleeping until i feel rested! i'm not sure how long i would have to sleep to feel rested, but i know it is later than 7:15. or 7:20. or 7:25, which is when i actually get up and race around trying not to be late . . . today i slept until 10:00 and still felt tired (but i blame the nyquil for my grogginess.)

it may be due to the fact that i rarely go to sleep before midnight anymore. i try. i start to bed earlier. but even when i make it to bed at a reasonable time, there are the dueling dogs to deal with. it is a nearly endless battle over who gets to lay RIGHT NEXT to mommy's left side. and then when i look at the clock, i see that it is almost tomorrow before i am unconscious.

but today we set our clocks back one hour. you would think this would result in an extra hour of sleep for me. but it doesn't. and it is all rollie's fault . . .

we have a lot of clocks in our house, largely because of all our electronics. and so, it takes a while to change them all. rollie is the one who is responsible for this task--because you know if it was me, the clocks would probably not all have the correct time for a week! usually he does this right before he goes to bed, but today he did it at 5:00--there was a big game on that he didn't want to miss (although as it turns out, he should have just watched old episodes of wipeout!) this was somewhat disorienting for me. in fact when he said, "what do you want to do about dinner tonight?" i looked at the clock and said, "well, i'm not hungry yet. it is only 4:15 and we didn't eat lunch until 1:00!"

"actually," he said, "it is 5:15. i already changed the clocks."

ok then. i tried to adjust. every time i looked at a clock, i had to remind myself that the clock said it was actually an hour earlier than it was.

this should have been easy for me, as i have sort of been doing this with one of my watches since we turned the clocks ahead last spring. i have two watches that i wear most of the time, but one of them is a little hard to change. and so, last spring i just left standard time on it. but then every time i looked at the watch, i had to add an hour to it. most of the time this wasn't a problem, because i usually know the hour--it is the minutes i am checking. however there were a few times where it was an issue . . .

but tonight when i looked at the clocks, i kept thinking, "oh good! even though the clock says 8:00 it is really only 7:00 because of the time change." this is the sort of thinking that leads to an extra hour of sleep. but tonight the clocks had already been changed, so my thinking went like this--"oh good! even though the clock says 8:00 it is really only 7:00. no wait, rollie already changed the clocks, so it really is 8:00. no, it is really 9:00 because the time change doesn't officially occur until 2:00 a.m. and then it will be 8:00. no, it will be 1:00 at 2:00. but now it is actually . . . AAGGHHHH!!!"

and then this thought entered my head--"what will hsn (my shopping channel of choice) do with that extra hour? it isn't on the schedule? how would they put it on the schedule--that would totally mess up the scheduling grid!!! and how can i sleep not knowing what they will be selling during that hour? what if it is something i want? and what time would that be really? midnight? 1:00? 2:00?"

maybe i should just take another swig of nyquil and call it a day . . .