Nov 5, 2015 3 min read

We think of the turning back of the clocks as the gift of sleep.

“We get an extra hour!” I said Saturday night, and there was the predictable reaction of glee. Maybe the end of Daylight Saving Time is a welcome event when you’re 20 or 45. But now that I’ve blown past both those mileposts, I know the truth of that extra hour. It will ruin your week, and give you a hometown bout of jetlag.

Unlike others in my household, I was not snoozing through that extra hour on Sunday morning. Six a.m. on the clock was seven a.m. in my head, and there I was, wide awake and staring at a long day. By 10 a.m., I was scrounging for lunch. By 3 p.m., I was hungry for dinner. But that was not the worst of it.

When you turn the clocks back an hour before going to bed on a Saturday night, you find yourself holding that hour in your hand come Sunday evening. And Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, too. That hour is heavy.

Every night this week, after putting in a long day of writing and cleaning and driving a teenager around and then raking leaves, I found myself yawning and dozing off at 7 – dozing off during “Jeopardy,” people. I am such a loser.

But it’s not my fault. Although I’m normally a 10 o’clock bedtime kind of girl, the manipulation of that hour has turned me into a sleepy bore. Monday night, in order to stay awake and not embarrass myself by hitting the sack at 8, I rallied the family for a game of cards. As the game of Egyptian Rat Race extended past 20 minutes, I was nodding off at the table.

Or course, the darkness we see at 5:30 is the real version of November, and the lag I’m feeling this week is from giving back the extra daylight we received last spring. Every spring and fall we hear of new scientific studies about how the time change affects our lives. The jump forward in spring is harder on our bodies than the fall back. Apparently, it’s more stressful to lose an hour of sleep than to gain one. Well, tell that to my family, who had unintentionally crispy chicken for dinner this week because I fell asleep while it was in the oven.

Who knew 60 minutes could jumble us so? And by the way, I fell asleep during “60 Minutes” Sunday.

There are other irritations. Twice a year I must reset the clock on my car’s dashboard, and twice a year I sit there staring at it, trying to remember what combinations of knobs I must push to do so. The same goes for the other digital clocks.

I know I should reset the old-fashioned wall clocks, too. But as we all know, I’m too tired for that. The clocks will be right again, come spring.

And maybe I will, too.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.