Sunny Side Down

I know I've written this before, but I am really pissed off about the change in daylight savings time.  For how long will my kids be arriving at school right around the same time the sun rises?  How crappy will it be to spend the first hour of school in fluorescent light, because there's almost no sunlight hitting the windows yet?  [I used to temp in high-rise Twin City during winter breaks at college, and there is nothing more depressing than leaving home in the dark and starting the day in fluorescent light.]

How much harder will it be for me to get myself moving in the morning, when the sun that's lighting up my backyard now won't arrive until 8:30 next week?

I know I'll be more conscious of the late afternoon sunshine added to my day, but under the radar, the dark mornings are going to do a number on my mood.

Congress allocated $150 million dollars to study the effects of this change.  Supposedly, if there are no demonstrably large improvements in energy consumption, we'll revert to the 1986 Daylight Savings parameters.  Early predictions are that there won't be any big savings in energy consumption -- whatever lights we're not turning on, our TVs, computers, and microwaves will still be running.

Plus, whatever savings there are in home energy consumption are almost certainly going to be wiped out by increased gas consumption.  Because no matter what energy fanatics think of daylight savings time, retailers love it: an extra hour of evening daylight apparently means an extra hour of shopping for most Americans.

Lovely.

In two weeks, unless things go very much differently than I expect, I am writing pleading letters to my congressman and two senators, begging them to reverse this decision.  I may enclose photos of my kids, standing in total darkness (as they never have yet, not all winter long) waiting for their bus.

I may mention that, the total darkness being as brutal as it is, I decided to let my kids sleep later for two weeks and drove them to school, wasting all that gasoline instead of putting them on the bus.

Stupid dumb-ass law.  May it go away very, very soon.

Comments

[terrilynn]

I'll admit to being happy about the early start of DST because we like having the early evenings to play outside. Mornings might be a little tough, but we already get up in the dark-L's bus comes at 6:45.

We did have some mornings in the fall before the switch back to EST where we waited in the dark for the bus. It was very strange to see moonlight at the bus stop!

[Maria]

But won't the electricity be used in the morning instead of the evening? I don't understand how there's supposed to be a net gain if we have to turn on our lights before breakfast instead of before supper.

[Meira]

Heh . . just as everyone is REALLY suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (believed by some to be in part to lack of morning sun), that dumbass is going to remove morning sunlight we just started to get? Typical.

[Andrea]

Thank you! Everyone looks at me like I'm completely nuts when I explain how I hate DST. It's hard enough to get my kids to go to bed at a decent hour, and now between the time change and the increased light leaking past the curtains, it's going to be Hell. Plus, I live in the hottest corner of the planet and actually would like having less hot daytime and more cool, darker evenings, which are also curtailed by the DST system. I am so not looking forward to the weekend.

[SusieJ]

What really POs me is that Bush thinks this is an energy policy.

[Madeleine]

I'm neutral on the spring change, but I'm looking forward to the adjusted fall DST change -- since my daughter has been trick-or-treating I have been annoyed every friggin' year that we make it darker at night just before Halloween. But one week would have done it, we didn't need the whole month.

[Swistle]

I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate Daylight Savings Time. Twice a year I nearly burst a blood vessel over it.

[Lilian]

I agree with you, I don't think it'll save much energy and having to get up in the dark will be awful. Do write those letters with photos of your kids waiting for the bus in the dark -- it's an excellent idea!

Some people wrote about enjoying longer days to play outdoors... the problem with that during the actual summer is that the boys won't go to sleep until it's dark, which makes for really late bedtime, particularly for a two year old (three this summer).

[Naomi]

I live in a big city, so we have "early start" and "late start" schools to facilitate busing. My daughter's early-start school starts at 7:30, and she gets on the bus at about 7:10. We've adjusted, but you know, standing in the dark to get on your bus sucks. And the long evenings are much less of a bonus when your kid needs to go to bed early. (Molly gets to stay up until 8, but she has a friend who goes to bed at 6:30.)

There was a time when I would have been a huge fan of an earlier daylight savings time. No longer.

[parodie]

I must admit that here we are quite excited about the earlier start to DST - in fact, I wouldn't mind staying on DST all year. It's dark until 7am or so most of the winter anyway, so that's not a big deal, and having the sun start to set at 3pm is just no fun. Of course, this is what happens when one lives on the edge of a timezone...

[Lisa C.]

No, no, no! I hate DST. HATE. Perhaps people from more temperate zones of the country appreciate having evening hours to play in, but it doesn't get cool enough on hot days here until AFTER the sun is almost down. In high summer that's 9:00 or 9:30 PM. It's useless here.

[bj]

I'm loving DST. Our days had just shifted so that we were getting out the door in the daylight. Shifting to DST hasn't changed that, and we have more sunshine in the afternoon, when we actually get to enjoy it outside. I think a lot depends on where you are in your time zone.

bj