Monday, March 12, 2007

Springing Forward

The coming of the spring time change is usually something to hate. Losing a whole hour--having to go to bed early and get up early--is hardly compensated by how easy it is to move the clocks forward. But this year, we felt quite differently about it. We moved the clocks ahead in the middle of the afternoon just to be one hour closer to bedtime.

The ducklings have made it to week eight of non-stop colds, and one or the other had been up coughing most nights the past week. I took them to the doctor on Friday, and he confirmed that it was, indeed, just a cold. So I took them home, counting on a few days of warm air and sunshine to help us finally knock it.

Spring finally has come. It still surprises me, out here, how suddenly it does come. Monday we are shivering in our heavy winter coats all through a ten-minute trip to the backyard. Friday we are swinging at the park in our shirt sleeves and leaving our windows open all afternoon.

But once again the light at the end of the tunnel proved to be an oncoming train. Just as I was hoping to get to sleep more often than every other night, D2 came down with the stomach flu at eleven o'clock at night, on the night when we had overnight guests. So that night none of us got any sleep, except for D1 who couldn't understand why everyone else was so listless on Saturday. I'm just hoping that when she threw up earlier in the week, it was the stomach flu and not just coughing spells, as I dismissed it at the time. And I hope this time--to balance things out--we've got the bug that only infects children and leaves the grownups alone.

At any other time I would welcome the news that the chicken pox is going around church, but just now, I'd really rather not deal with it.

Poor D2 is still so tired he fell asleep on the floor this morning. I wish I could join him. DOB, meanwhile, has declared himself a miscosmist (which is one who dislikes the universe at large). But I say a guy who will lie awake all night and let a toddler barf on his shirt is something else entirely.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like your idea of changing the clocks ahead in the afternoon!

This year the Spring Forward caught us in possibly the worst scenario we have had so far: moving in for a play (and my hero was also quite ill). About 11:45, the artistic director looks at him and asks, "are you in there?" LOL

He sent us home. But when my hero declared, "if we hurry, we can get home by midnight", well, there was no hope of that. Midnight vanished into thin air!