Timed Out

It’s a week past the start of Daylight Savings Time and I’m still lying around the house like a third generation mustard stain on a secondhand couch. Study my symptoms and you’d think I lost a gallon of blood and the frontal lobe of my brain instead of an hour’s sleep. I can barely summon the energy to twist my Oreos apart to eat the Double Stuff filling before the chocolate cookie outside part as required by International Law.

One evening I watched an entire episode of a gardening show because I couldn’t summon the energy to change the channel. Me watching a gardening show is like the Boston Strangler checking out an Infomercial on nylon rope. It’s like the murderous board game, Clue. Amy BrownThumb in the kitchen overwatering the African Violets. Innocent houseplants shouldn’t have to die just because I’m out of synch with my Mickey Mouse watch. But Greenwich Mean Time has got nothing on Daylight Cranky Time.

I realize there are people out there, precocious perky people, who adjust to the time change as if it were no more than an afternoon tea party. I do too, provided the tea party is crashed by a wrecker wielding a ten-ton smashing ball and all the guests hang on their chairs like rotting slipcovers.

There’s one family nearby that moves their clocks forward at noon on Saturday to give themselves time to get accustomed to the change. That’s the sort of radical free thinking that divided the country and brought about signs of the end time like tube socks, disco, and reality televison.

This morning as I lay with my face on the table, flailing at the snooze alarm on the microwave with one hand, I realized I’d hit bottom. I had to take immediate action.

So instead of waiting for Daylight Savings Time to end, I went ahead and took a quick Time Out and grabbed my extra hour of sleep right away.

Now if I could only figure out why I have Double Stuff filling in my ear.