hi ho! hi ho! it's back to work i go . . .

so today . . . i went back to work. it was time. i guess.

i've been off for most of the last two weeks, trying to recover from this bout of pneumonia. but it isn't fiscally feasible for me to just stay home until i am 100% better--that could take several weeks. so i decided that i would go back today and see how it went.

the day did not get off to a great start. my alarm clock was the culprit. last night when i got into bed, i set the alarm on my clock for the first time in several weeks. (i've spent most of the last six weeks sleeping in the recliner downstairs to minimize the disturbance caused by my nighttime coughing, so i have been using the alarm on my phone--whenever i needed an alarm.) i have two alarms set on my clock--one is earlier and one is later. i chose the earlier time, knowing that in addition to getting ready for work, i was also going to have to deal with the whole sinus rinsing thing and the new inhaler. but as you know, i never plan to get up when the alarm goes off--i plan to get up after i have hit the snooze button a time or two (not to exceed three, or i will really be late!)

so this morning when the alarm went off, oh so early, i hit the snooze button. just once. the second time the alarm went off, i rolled over and got up. i was feeling pretty proud of myself. then i happened to glance at my clock and noticed that the time on my alarm clock matched the time displayed on my phone. perfectly.

uh-oh.

this was wrong, very wrong. the time on my clock is supposed to be between 7 and 13 minutes fast, so that i will think that it is later than it is and not be late to work. but if the time on my clock matched the time on my phone, then it was not fast--it was right in sync with the atomic time set by some satellite orbiting in space . . .

UH-OH!

and then i remembered . . .

i remembered when the time changed and rollie was going around the house changing all the clocks. he didn't initially change my clock, because, well, he can't stand to look at my clock, since it always has the wrong time on it. and i don't like him to touch my clocks, because he insists on setting them to the correct time! but my clock projects the time onto the ceiling, and after several days of me sleeping in the recliner, i think he got tired of looking at the wrong time on the ceiling--because not only were the minutes off (which is necessary if i have any hope of getting to work on time,) but the hour was off too, because i hadn't changed the time when we went back to standard time. i was going to. i had planned to. but then i started sleeping downstairs, and i just forgot . . .

and then one day i realized that the time on my clock had mysteriously been changed to reflect the actual time rather than julie-time. i asked rollie about it, and he said that he didn't know what happened--he was just trying to help me out by changing the time to reflect the correct hour, and somehow the minutes got changed too. he said all of this with that innocent, little boy look in his eyes. which immediately caused me to question the truthfulness of his statement, because while he was trying to look innocent, he actually looked guilty, guilty, guilty . . .

but that day was several weeks ago, and i had decided to let him enjoy the correct time for a while. i thought i would just tweak the minutes when i started using the alarm again. that was my plan. but in the ensuing weeks, i had totally forgotten about it. even when i got into bed last night and saw the time staring at me from the ceiling . . .

. . . so i had to get ready for work this morning in real time. i managed to do it, even with all the extra stuff i had to do. i did, however, have to go to work without any makeup on.

once i got to school, the day was kind of uneventful. we had music time, work time, we practiced for our christmas program and had macaroni and cheese for lunch (yum!) then i sent the kids off for their rest time, sat down at my desk, leaned my head against the wall behind me, and fell asleep.

yes, sitting in my chair, i fell alseep. if my coffee machine hadn't made a noise for no apparent reason, i might still be sitting there sleeping. i don't know what happened. i just closed my eyes for a minute, and the next thing i knew, 20 minutes had disappeared. apparently i was tired.

but the important thing is, i made it through the day. i didn't have to come home early. rollie didn't have to come get me and take me to urgent care. i didn't have to take any tylenol or cough medicine. things were almost back to normal. almost.

except for the time on my clock, my bare face, and my impromptu nap . . .

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 . . .