I will tell you what kind of talk sends me immediately to the kind of squirmy rage that makes me want to flail futilely at someone’s face: “Wait, it would be FIVE o’clock, but now it’s SIX o’clock, so it’ll be EASIER….wait, no, HARDER to…wait, no. Okay, it WOULD be five o’clock, but we CHANGED…”

I’m not saying I don’t start these very Daylight Savings Time discussions myself: I’m powerless not to, which makes me want to flail at my own face. And then I have to listen to Paul doing them and ALSO correcting me that “actually, it’s saving, not savingS,” which he’s super-lucky hasn’t gotten him killed. PLUS, the kids get involved, so there’s the added bonus of having these discussions with people who are not understanding the concept at all.

Anyway, this has got to change. (CHANGE. See what I did there?) I’m not going through this again. Well, no, I’m going through it ONE MORE TIME, but this time I’m WRITING IT DOWN. Every time we do that stupid hour-math in the next couple of days and come to an accurate conclusion, I’m writing it down. Next year I will be able to copy this to a word-processing document, increase the font size, print it out, and hang it next to the clock. (Paul tells me I could also make a Google docs document so that ANYONE can print it out. I will work on this, so perhaps when we are looking for this post next year we will find a link to something printable.) (Ha ha, like I’ll actually follow through with that.) (I ACTUALLY FOLLOWED THROUGH WITH THAT: Google Docs printout.)

It will be HARDER to wake up in the morning: you will feel startled and deprived when the alarm goes off, or if you don’t have to use the alarm you might wake up startled by how late the clock says it is. If the kids normally wake at 6:00, you may be pleasantly surprised to find them getting up at 7:00. (Maybe. In my experience, children only seem to make the negative adjustments.) Then you’ll walk around all day saying, “I don’t know WHY I’m so tired when I slept an hour later!” If you have a teenager, he or she may emerge an hour after you would usually expect.

It will be HARDER to go to bed at night: you will feel sleepy later than usual. If you have a small child, you’ll be dealing with an hour of perkiness and calling you in, as their little internal clock tells them it’s not sleeping time and you tell them it is.

It will be EASIER to wait for meals: you will feel hungry later than usual. The children will not be hungry at lunchtime, and then an hour later you will be saying, “OMG stop whining for food, you JUST HAD lunch. This is why I told you to finish your sandwich.” Then you will sneak into the kitchen and have a little nibble because OMG HUNGRY.

It gets light LATER in the morning. This is dreary for waking up, especially since we have been since December gradually getting used to having more light in the mornings, and we will sit sipping our coffee resentfully in the dark.

It gets dark LATER in the evening. This is nice for the evening commute, and for making letting the kids play outside right up until dinnertime.

People who forget to change their clocks will arrive places an hour LATE. If you are having a party on the Sunday of a time change, you should make plans for late arrivers, just in case, and you should put a reminder of the time change on the invitations. If you have an appointment, you may miss it. If you have church, you may arrive just in time for the post-service coffee and doughnuts.

If you want to prepare the children for the change ahead of time, don’t bother. Or if you must, you can spend the days before the change waking them up earlier and putting them to bed earlier. And I recommend changing the clocks late afternoon on Saturday, so that the lost hour comes from the kids’ pre-bedtime time, rather than their post-bedtime time.

See also: Fall Back (Standard Time)