Time change too time consuming

“What? No. The time doesn’t change this Sunday, does it?” I heard this time and again before the switch to daylight saving time last Sunday. It’s something that snuck up on lots of folks. 

Did you know that some places don’t switch to “DST?” I lived in Arizona a bit. They don’t do daylight saving time there. I liked that. After all, changing all the timepieces around the house can add up.

For many years I used to set my clocks ahead or back, depending on the time of year, before I went to bed.
Since I’ve been hangin’ with The lady of the house, things are a little different. 

About mid-afternoon last Saturday she said we needed to set the clocks ahead before going to sleep.
“But I thought you didn’t like that,” I said with my face scrunched up in confusion. You see, I tried to set the clocks back before bedtime last fall and was told to wait until the morning.

“If you do it before bedtime    then we don’t realize we’ve lost an hour tomorrow morning. In the fall, you wait until Sunday morning to set the clocks back so you can have the joy of getting that hour back.”
“Ohhhhh,” I said as a light bulb came on in my head.

So that night I went about changing all the clocks in the house. There was the one above the fireplace, the one in the kitchen over the stove, then there was the digital clock on the microwave followed by the “old school” clock radio on the fridge that has the numbers that flip forward on tiny little cards.

“Don’t forget the video recorders,” said The lady of the house.
I turned on the TV in the kitchen and changed the clock on that VCR followed by the VCR in the living room. Then there was the little clock on top of the TV, the clock on the thermostat for the heater and the clock in the bathroom.

I thought about all the clocks in the house before I moved into the bedroom. That should do it, I thought.  No, there are timepieces on my bicycles, but I’ll get those in the morning.

In the bedroom there was the lady of the house’s clock radio to change. Then I looked at my side of the bed — four clocks to adjust there. When you have to get up at 10 minutes to 4 in the morning to go to work you can’t trust just one alarm clock.

Finally, there was one little clock left in the master bath.  It was one I found at a yard sale for a quarter. I figured out why — the adjusting buttons are sticky and don’t work all that well.

And that’s what time change means at our stucco hacienda; 15 clocks have to be adjusted, 18 when I count the timepieces on the bicycles. Oops, 19 ... I forgot The Lady of the House’s antique mantle clock, but I don’t touch that because it’s very temperamental. That’s all hers to mess with.

Wait, there’s 20. I forgot the clock radio in the bathroom.
Nope, 21. There’s the clock in the car. 
Man, 22. I have to manually change the time on this older computer. 
Forgot another one: the time on my old cell phone. That makes 23.
Woops! Forgot my pocket watch. And then there are the clocks at work. Do I count those too?

Grant McGee hosts the weekday morning show on KTQM-FM in Clovis. Contact him at: 
blisscreeksw@yahoo.com