Guaranteed Behaviors on the Day After Daylight Saving Time Ends

Whether you have hated it or loved it, Daylight Saving Time has bid us a fond farewell, and won’t come back for another five months.

The biannual ritual of falling back and springing forward is not something I get excited about, but I (always observant of behaviors) have noticed a pattern in myself and my fellow human folk on the day after DST ends. It is probably something that you’ve simply accepted as normal and no longer pay attention to, but it is real and I’m going to give it a name, like a syndrome or a condition… Guaranteed Behaviors on the Day After Daylight Saving Time Ends, or GBOTDADSTE for short (pronounced, gee-boat-adse-tee). The symptoms are as follows:

• You will wake up an hour earlier than you need to, and then try to go back to sleep, but you waste your precious recently reacquired hour lying in bed looking at the clock that you need to adjust.
• You will run around changing all the non-internet connected clocks manually, and if you don’t get to them all because the kids ask you to come into the other room, the phone rings, or just that it’s the one on the microwave that you never remember, you will inevitably compare your cell phone to each one, to ensure each displays the correct time
• Family members will continually ask you what time it is, because the microwave clock still has the wrong time and this has confused them
• You will ask EVERYONE you talk to that day if they remembered to turn their clocks back, then you remind them to do the one on the microwave
• You will run into at least one person who has been an hour ahead the entire day, because they forgot DST ended the night before
• Even though you were excited about finally getting your one hour back, you will become strangely irritated by the end of the day because it will have seemed so much longer than usual
• That night, you will fall asleep an hour later than you usually do, making you a bit cranky the next morning, because that hour you got back on Sunday doesn’t make another appearance Monday morning
• Not exactly GBOTDADSTE, but a residual effect of it: You will panic for just one split second on Monday morning, because you STILL have not changed the microwave clock, making you believe you are late for work

Anything and everything you EVER wanted to know about Daylight Saving Time (no, not Daylight Savings Time) can be found at this convenient little virtual web exhibit.

http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/

Enjoy that while I go around and change all the clocks in my house.

My minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now

It’s Just Hair! Or, is It?

What are the makings of a Good Hair Day? Things go exactly as planned. No one crosses you in any way. Your coffee is hot, tastes great, and you don’t spill it on yourself. You feel fantastic, and absolutely nothing can faze you.

Some people just don’t understand how all this hangs in the balance of how your hair looks. It does.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation:

You wake up and start the day by doing everything within your capacity to arrange your hair as attractively as possible. You apply various styling products and use such-and-such curling / flattening / teasing / taming apparatus, alternately heating and hydrating your tresses until not even Vidal Sassoon, Paul Mitchell, and John Frieda combined could do any good with the battlefield that crowns your head.

Giving up and pulling the entire mess back into a clip, that for some reason keeps popping open, you grab your stuff and run out the door… late, since you just spent an extra 20 minutes in front of the mirror trying to make yourself presentable to the world.

Half-way to the office, you realize you have inconveniently forgotten the bag containing a carefully packed breakfast and lunch, which was going to save you ten smackeroos in take-out. And, because the bag is not insulated, not only will you need to buy breakfast and lunch, you will also have to throw out most of what you packed, and therefore will have wasted an additional $6.95.

Arriving at work, your favorite parking space is taken, and you search around helplessly for an alternate. Finally settling on one in the “South Forty”, you hoof it to the main building in your new stilettos (which you put on, hoping this might prevent a certain percentage of people from paying any attention to your hair), but the heel of your left shoe catches in a crack in the pavement, breaks off, and you twist your ankle. Limping in, your co-worker sympathetically lends an arm and helps you to a chair. She says, “Oh my gosh, you poor thing, you must have taken a horrible spill out there. Just look at your hair!”

The rest of the day follows in kind.

Emotionally drained, you arrive home that evening, toss the rotting food you left on the table earlier in the day, and get into bed, falling into a fitful sleep — only to wake up in the middle of the night needing to tinkle. You stumble to the bathroom and turn on the light, noticing that your hair has magically fallen perfectly into place. Aside from a few strays this way and that, which you smooth down in wonderment, it looks completely amazing!

Not wanting to spoil the dream, you lie back down in bed in a really weird position, so your hair won’t get all messed up.

Sadly, you are unable to fall back asleep. When the alarm clock screams 5:45 AM, you are elated to find that your hair still looks fabulous, but you are exhausted and have a nasty kink in your neck.  You know, though, this is totally OK… because no one’s ever said they had a bad neck day, right?

My minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now

The Peeves That Are Pet

What really grates on your nerves? That weird laugh your aunt has? The guy that parks his car up against your bumper on a busy street? They way your hair won’t do what you want it to, ever?

We all get annoyed at things. And, the more these things turn up to annoy us, the bigger the peeve gets, until it becomes a PET PEEVE: the one thing that, whenever it happens, sends you into mind-blinding conniption. Maybe that’s a little too strong a metaphor, but sometimes it can come pretty close to that.

Here are my PPs. (Disclaimer: I’m not telling anyone to stop doing these things, you should live your own life; but, you know, if you happen to see me in your general vicinity… that’s all I’m sayin’…)

Retail and grocery store representatives who disrespect their employers in conversations with nearby co-workers, while customers are within earshot.

Everybody hates their job once in a while, and needs to blow off steam; but, unless they are close, personal friends of yours, customers will not feel sorry for you and will definitely not rally to your aid. Customers are always on their own sides, and want to get in and out of your store within the scope of their own business… not yours. What it all boils down to is that customers would generally prefer to complain to you about your employer, than listen to anything you have to say within the same genre. No soothing “awe, shoo shoo baby” for you. I’m sorry. Take it up with HR.

(Customer Relations is my profession… I am totally not making this stuff up)

 The Color Purple

No, not the movie. The color. I have no idea why I dislike purple so much, I just do. Can’t explain it. My peeve is that I was born in the month of February, so my birthstone is Amethyst.

February is the month of love and hearts! Why the birthstone folks couldn’t have given us Feb girls Rubies, I will never understand.

Drivers who honk at me when I am in the right-hand turning lane.

I drive a minivan and I can only imagine that it might be difficult for you to see the pedestrians in front of me; or to accurately gauge, from your vantage point, oncoming traffic to the left me. I apologize that destiny placed me in front of you at the moment, and I am sure you are a capable driver, but as much as I appreciate your gentle encouragement to move forward sooner than I believe it is safe to do so, please know that my minivan is not as swift and agile as your sports car might be, and I will be the judge of when to press down on the gas pedal.

If it is any consolation to you, feel free to zip and zoom around me the moment it is your turn to turn.  I will not be offended when we meet up again at the next stop light.

Drivers who seem to have fallen asleep in the right-hand turning lane… wait, um… never mind.

Soooo, so my minute is up. Thanks for spending yours with me.

Just a Minute Now