Save me from daylight saving | Lisa Scottoline

I hate daylight saving time.

Every time we spring forward, I fall down.

We changed the clocks last weekend, and I’m still tired.

I never get over it.

I won’t for approximately six months.

And you know what’s happening six months from now — they want us to fall back.

Some people will be happy in the fall that we’ll get an extra hour of sleep, but that screws me up the opposite way. I don’t know why we just can’t leave time alone.

Anybody who’s aging will agree.

Why do we have to start messing with time?

Something about it must capture our imagination, if you consider there are so many TV shows and movies about time-traveling. I’m fine with that, but does the government have to get into the act?

Government should fix potholes.

I still can’t figure out why daylight saving time is so difficult.

It’s only getting up an hour earlier, but it screws up my eating schedule, so that I’m not hungry at breakfast, and somehow, after work, I end up eating dinner too late.

Last night, I had eggplant parm at 9:30 p.m.

Do you think I slept?

No.

I can’t even blame the farmers.

In theory, those are the people we’re changing clocks for.

I think people make you feel guilty about hating daylight saving time, like you don’t care about farmers.

Like it’s selfish to hate daylight saving time.

Here is my response:

I live on a farm.

I grow hay.

Technically, I am a farmer.

And this farmer hates daylight saving time.

Ha!

So don’t feel guilty if you hate daylight saving time, too, because we’re all on the same side.

Don’t even get me started on what it does to animals.

I have horses, and when I start feeding them an hour early, I wake up in darkness, open the barn, turn on the light, and they look at me blinking.

They blink and blink.

By the way, if you have never seen a horse blink when you wake him, it is super-cute. Still, that doesn’t make me like daylight saving time.

Horses don’t want to eat that early, either.

And, in theory, they’re hungry as horses.

The chickens are the same way. They’re huddled together in the morning, and these days, their little round eyes look so tired.

The dogs, too.

Nobody in my house wants to get up early, not even by an hour.

Yesterday morning, I had to pick up Peach, still sleeping, and carry her downstairs.

As for the cat, she doesn’t want to get up at all.

Cats follow their own clock, as well as their own rules.

My cat takes a dim view of daylight saving time, because she takes a dim view of everything.

She raises dim view to an art form.

That’s why I love her.

She’s the counterpoint to my sunny nature, and you know I’m sunny, except when they start messing with my sun.

Like now.

Remember that I have a fox these days whom I feed outside, and he’s arriving later than he used to, since he didn’t get the memo about daylight saving time. So what happened is the other day I looked outside to find a raccoon eating the fox’s dinner.

Yes, now I have a raccoon.

Who’s smart enough to read a clock.

The other day, I saw an online poll asking people, What is the dumbest thing you believed when you were younger?

I was tempted to say, Love conquers all.

But that sounded bitter.

In truth, the dumbest thing I believed when I was little was about daylight saving time. For some reason, I thought the extra daylight got saved in a room in an attic, and they let it out or put it back in at certain times of year.

What does this show us?

That I was really a dumb little kid.

And I have historically never understood daylight saving time.

As I’ve gotten older, I think I’m boycotting daylight saving time. It takes me four months to give up and turn back the clocks. For months and months, I will look at a clock and add one rather than change the clock.

So either I’m lazy or I’m stubborn.

Or maybe I’m just sleepy.

Thanks, daylight saving time.

Look for Lisa and Francesca’s humor collection, “I See Life Through Rosé-Colored Glasses,” and Lisa’s number-one best-selling thriller, “After Anna,” and her Rosato & DiNunzio novel, “Feared,” in stores now. Also, look for Lisa’s new novel, “Someone Knows,” coming April 9. lisa@scottoline.com.