Falling Back

This is Jennifer Johnson. I have a book with Resplendence due out in April of next year. I'm introducing myself at the beginning so that you don't wonder what insane person has blogged at Resplendence today with the absurd topic of...

The End of Daylight Savings Time.

Does anybody else hate the time change? Well, actually, I don't hate THIS time change - just the one in the Spring. This morning I'm finally getting back the hour wrenched from me back in March when the powers that be put the Daylight Savings into effect. The savings used to begin in April. I know because legend has it that I was born the night of that time change, so there was some discussion about which hour to put on the birth certificate. I don't know if this really happened, but it makes a great story. (Mom, next time we talk, tell me if this story is true or not, will you?) Today Daylight Savings has ended. No more saving of the daylight. We're plowing ahead to longer nights, and soon I'll gaze up at the sky at four in the afternoon and marvel at the freakin' sunset.

It's almost enough to make me move to Arizona, except I've heard they have scorpions out there. Scorpions like to hide in people's shoes. You have to check your shoes before you stick your foot in. I don't like that. I just want to shove my foot in and go without the risk of a painful sting on the toe because I've crowded a little trespassing beast.

Arizona is the only smart state who has refused to participate in the time saving madness. Their kids aren't cranky twice a year because their schedules have been maliciously marauded. Oooo. I like that - even with the ly adverb: maliciously marauded. I'll have to make sure one of my characters says that some time. It will have to be a supporting character - one who provides comic relief even if he or she doesn't know they are doing so.

And, really, if the marauders are going to steal an hour in the Spring only to give it back in the Fall, doesn't it make sense to do this on a Friday night to give us two days to acclimate ourselves before the work week? Surely someone else has thought of this. It's a brilliant idea if we are going to continue to follow this antiquated practice.

I have a terrible memory, so I don't know what I had to give up in March because of Daylight Savings. I'm going to guess it was an hour of writing, though. So, yay! I get to write an extra hour today to make up for it. Maybe the characters in my current WIP can finally get their butts off the floor where they've been sitting for a while waiting for me to engage them in a passionate embrace or else to have my hero exit into the cold Christmas eve night. He's definitely leaving. I know that much, but will he get a kiss first? That I haven't worked out yet, and it's been brewing a while during which my life has been...errrr...being lived. You know, if I could get an extra hour EVERY week for writing, I would embrace the time change with both arms.

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