Damn You Benjamin Franklin!

Welcome to Coffee.  You weren’t hoping I would be all bubbly and chatty, were you?  Cause I’m less bubbly and chatty and more dozy and dumb.  I’ve been this way all week long.  If my eyes roll back and my head flops to the right don’t worry, it’s not a stroke, I’ve just fallen asleep.  If clearing your throat loudly doesn’t wake me, try poking me with your spoon.  Coffee has done nothing to alleviate my exhaustion; apparently caffeine isn’t the guy for the job today. Maybe a cocktail of energy drinks with extra strong caffeine shooters will do the trick.

I have nothing to report in the way of interest this past week.  It’s all a blur.  However, yesterday I did have to muster up some form of energy because I had some errands to run/schlump.  Thank goodness for automobiles, even if I probably shouldn’t have been trusted behind the wheel.

A group of pimply-faced high school students pushed the cross-walk button but I was already too close to stop and too tired to give a shit. One of them waved his arms at me so I rolled the window down and yelled “DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!”

I dozed off reading the label on a can of soup in the grocery store and a guy said “You gonna buy that or what?” My eyelids creaked open and I scowled at him. “Daylight savings time. And no, I’m not going to buy that because the sodium is too high but I can’t make my arm lift it back to the shelf. Here, you do it.”  I pushed the can into his hand and shuffled along.

Later, when I was home and shouldn’t have been expected to interact with anyone besides The Viking, the doorbell rang and two young guys were smiling beatifically, badges from Vivint on their jackets. “Hi! I see you have an SAI Security System sign in your garden. That can’t be right because they don’t exist anymore.”

“So? Not many criminals keep up on corporate take-overs and share prices.”  My left eye wouldn’t open so I had to rely entirely on my right eye.

The tall one hesitated but managed to come back before I fell asleep on my feet. “Do you have an alarm system now? Are you protected by a different company?”

“Yes. And before you go any further…..Daylight Savings Time.”

“Pardon me?”

“Daylight. Savings. Time. I’m too tired to listen to you.”

They both looked uncertain and just as my eyelid was crashing shut the tall one said. “Okay. Thank you for your time.”

Kidney Clothes called to see if I had anything to donate. I said no, I didn’t have anything to donate but the woman said “Not even an old blouse or sweater? We could really use some sweaters.”

“Daylight Savings Time.”

“Pardon me?”

“Daylight Savings Time. I’ve lost 7 hours of sleep this week and by tomorrow it will be 8 hours of sleep. I haven’t got the energy to clean out my closet today. Call me next month.”  Yes, that was a little rude but I only had so many words in me and I used them up quickly.

“Um. Okay. Thank you for your time.”

I’ve fallen asleep twice on the toilet this week and once at my desk – The Viking caught me that time but he was more envious than cranky, especially when I offered to spoon with him if we went to bed right then. His sense of ‘work before play’ kept him from acting in his own self-interest though.

I also sucked in a cat hair when I was yawning and do you know how difficult it is to get a cat hair out of your mouth? It’s ridiculous. I suppose I should be grateful that it isn’t fly season yet but somehow I can’t muster up the effort.

I know who is to blame for this and this definitely needs to be blamed on someone! I need someone to heap curses on and a name to shout when necessary – and this week it has been very much necessary. “DAMN YOU BENJAMIN FRANKLIN!!”

Okay, to be fair, he didn’t actually invent Daylight Savings Time, he just came up with the idea. Probably when he was drunk. It took some other nefarious individuals to implement this evil, but I’m too tired to list out all the people involved.

So Benjamin Franklin will be receiving all my angst and curses. At least until I’m not a walking/schlumping zombie or a danger to the public at large when I’m behind the wheel of my car.

Daylight Savings Time never used to bother me at all, but for the last few years it’s been kicking the shit out of me.  The Viking is in the same boat.  Do we live our lives on the razor’s edge of competent functioning?  Is a single hour of sleep all that separates us from Sloths with the ability to drive?

If I had a Time Machine, I would go back to Benjamin Franklin, rip that pen right out of his hand and tell him not to even think it because some asshole in the twentieth century will think it’s a great idea and ruin humanity forever.  Or at least a week.

So, did DST kick the shit out of you too, or is it just The Viking and I?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going for a nap. A seven hour nap.

Thanks to Nerd in the Brain for hosting Coffee this weekend.  Cheers.

16 thoughts on “Damn You Benjamin Franklin!”

  1. Sounds like quite a week. Hopefully your body adjusts to the whole daylight savings…. Thankfully we don’t do it here, but keeping up with time zones and whether a particular one us now 1 hour or 2 hours ahead is enough to boggle my mind.

    1. Lucky lady to be spared DST. :o) Time zones are tricky. The Viking’s family all live in Denmark so I leave all the math involved to The Viking.

    1. That nap yesterday fixed me right up! They should make it a long weekend when they put the clock forward – it would give us a day to adjust instead of hurling us directly into business as usual. :o)

  2. What a funny post!

    Well, while you are falling asleep on the toilet, I was running about the neighborhood yelling, “Yay, it’s Daylight Savings Time! More light! More energy! More everything!”

    I figure you would hate me, if you knew me! 😀

    Seriously, I really enjoyed your post – got a big smile from it.

    1. Haha! I like the extra daylight, I just wish it didn’t come at the expense of sleep. It feels like jetlag to me. :o) I’m glad you liked the post.

  3. Not extra light, just moved from morning until evening. It bugs me that people don’t understand how this torture device actually works. Daylight extends as the earth axial tilts, then the 20th century morons you mentioned made it so we lose sleep so we can fall asleep sitting outside here until 9:30 p.m., instead of 8:30 p.m., once summer comes.

    I didn’t feel it much — changed my clocks Saturday afternoon to try to adjust while I was awake. That seems to help me.

    Hope you’re feeling more awake now.

  4. I feel bad that the time change has messed up your week so badly. Personally, I usually bounce back from DST quickly but it takes the cats weeks to adjust. They keep waking us up at 5:00 complaining that breakfast is late. Hang in there!

    1. Thankfully I’m feeling great again. :o) Plenty of sleep during the weekend has made me just as dangerous as usual.

  5. I’m with you–I hate Daylight Savings Time. The only good thing is that the sunrises have been spectacular, but I’m too pissed off to really enjoy them.

  6. I so remember when DST screwed up the kids’ rhythms… Never in my wildest dreams did I think a bloody hour less could screw me up. Hah! I feel your pain. Well, not quite to your level but definitely some of it. I got my first decent night’s sleep last night. Slept on the wrong side of the bed hoping it would do something…
    Hope all gets back into whack soon!

    1. Same for you, Dale. I don’t want to contemplate what sleeping on the wrong side of the bed would do to me though. :o)

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