Yesterday, the clocks all changed. No, I’ll not use passive voice. Except for the Apple things in this house, the clocks do not change themselves. To spring forward and fall back, I have to wander around the house setting some dozen clocks, ranging from the phone system and thermostat to the enormous wall clock in the dining room. That one alone can take ten minutes to change, most of the time spent trying to convince it that it wants to go back on its wall hanger. The entire project usually takes about a half hour. Which makes the name — Daylight Saving Time — seem an oxymoron.
Last night, I got done with my bread baking and cleaned up the dishes in full darkness. The time? 5:30pm. By 6:30, my body was slowing down for bed — a full two hours before I could reasonably call it a night.
I don’t like the time change. I don’t like clocks much either. I really don’t like setting my body to artificial clock time. While I appreciate not heading off to work in dawn twilight, now I will be driving home in solid darkness. There will be no time for outdoor evening tasks. Lucky, I got the last of the mulch spread yesterday because there will be no more gardening this year.
(Of course, it’s supposed to snow again on Wednesday… time to get the winter tires on the car, I guess…)
I used the two hours of darkness to put away the indoor Hallowmas stuff and pull out Early Winter, which is late fall with an overlay of silver and sparkly glass beads. The colors are still rust and brown, but the black is put away — mostly — and I added a bit of plum and gold to the window seat pillow covers (my draft blockers on a bump-out double window that has zero insulation… in my office… fortunately, it faces southeast…).
Still, even though I got that done a bit ahead of the game, I feel like I’ve had several of my precious weekend hours stolen. It’s even hard to focus enough to read when my body is saying, “Hey, numbskull, it’s dark! We’re diurnal! Any idea what that means?!?”.
This is repeated twice a year every year. And to what end? Only that we all march to the same drum in the service of capitalism. Which I also don’t like…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 