Time Is Not Money

Has everyone survived the great and wonderful mess with Nature that we all refer to as Daylight Savings Time? As parents this is a problem at both ends of the spectrum. When we fall back we can't just reset the kids internal clocks, so they're getting up quite early. Which, of course, means that we as parents are. And because they're up early they'll want to go to bed early. Which, in turn, means they'll get up early the next day... Do you see how a pattern is forming here? By the time we have them sufficiently conditioned to go with the flow it'll be time to Spring Ahead.

Springing Ahead has it's own set of problems. We are now forced to wake children who are sleeping. The adage about letting sleeping dogs lie is nothing compared to what happens when you wake sleeping children. A dog may bite you, and then curl up and go back to sleep. Your kid? Will make your entire day a miserable mess from the time you wake them until the time you try to send them to bed early to make up for the lack of sleep in the morning.

Leave it to the government to step in and mess with Nature Herself. And toddlers. Of the two, the toddlers would be the ones I'd fear the most.

Our family has a tradition that on Time Change Sunday we go out for breakfast. I mean, the kids are up and at 'em anyway so really what else are we going to do? Let them eat Halloween candy? That would be crazy. What would they eat for lunch if you allowed them to eat candy for breakfast?

Last year was an epic fail on the breakfast front. We decided to go to the local donut place. It was a Dunkin, but they were bought out by a local who named it something that I can't remember. And at 8:30 in the AM their donuts were stale. I'm pretty sure they would have broken a toe if you dropped them. Okay, maybe not. But they would have at least chipped your nail polish right off your big toe. How can one mess up donuts? We haven't been back to the Donut Place since. We're not stupid.

This year we went to Sheetz. For those who do not have the pleasure of having a Sheetz in your neck of the woods, it's a convenience store. (They still call gas stations with snack shops that, right?) Sheetz is the place to go for order-it-from-a-touch-screen convenience. And in their defense they have some really good sandwiches there. But since they've redone their food selections recently they are now charging as much for their lattes as Starbucks does. And they are not Starbucks. So we fed the kids from Sheetz, and headed to SB for my peppermint mocha.

I got the boys chocolate milk, but Micah cannot drink from the bottle in a moving vehicle without a very large and chocolaty mess being made. I grabbed one of their cups with a lid and a straw and poured his milk into it. I'm genius that way. Micah put it in his cup holder and off we went to get mama's coffee.

Only we didn't figure on daddy's driving. Daddy is practicing for the races any time he is behind the wheel, and generally sends everything on the dash flying by simply taking a turn. Every. Single. Time. This time, however, he also managed to tip Micah's chocolate milk right out of it's holder and onto his lap. Despite a lid, there's only so much holding back it can do what with the hole in the middle for the straw. Micah was not happy to be wearing wet and cold. His sensory issues had a lot to say about that. We went to Wal-Mart and got him new pants before church.

Obviously time saved is not money saved.