The Mother Load

Published March 8, 2009
St. George Spectrum & Daily News

There are so few things in this world that I hate. I have a live and let live attitude about a lot of reprehensible things. I’m more than willing to peacefully coexist with bank bailouts, banjo music, and Britney Spears, so it may come as a shock to you that I hate (HATE!) Daylight Saving Time.

If you didn’t realize it was time to set your clocks forward today, good for you. You may have had to make a frantic dash to church an hour late, but you did so just as rested as you were last week. Me? Not so lucky. I’m writing this on a Friday and will be emailing it to certain members of my family with whom I attend church. If I stumble in late on Sunday and say I forgot, they’ll know I’m lying, and darn it if they don’t put up with that kind of thing.

You may be wondering why I hate (HATE!) Daylight Saving Time so much. It’s fairly innocuous on its surface. We save energy. We enjoy long summer evenings. We get to sleep in every fall when we turn the clocks back. Why the hate (HATE!)?

I’m tired. I’m bone tired. I’m dead tired. I’m anything else you can think of to denote really, really tired tired. Wait, I’ve got it. I’m MOM tired.

You moms out there know what I’m talking about. Being mom tired isn’t so much a circumstance as a state of being. Take any mom, calculate the number of years since her first pregnancy, and you have the number of years she’s been mom tired. Calculate the number of times she’s had to watch Barney or Mary-Kate and Ashley and you have the degree to which she’s mom tired.

I’ve been 87, 586 degrees of mom tired for just over 12 years now, and every spring of those 12 years, I’ve had to wake up an hour early…not because someone was sick…not for an early morning hike or fun filled road trip…not for any of the other reasons moms who are mom tired will happily lose even more sleep. No, all those springs, I’ve awakened because some wise guy on Capitol Hill thinks I should. I think this may be the year I’ve had enough of that.

Dear Wise Guy,

I regret to inform you that this Sunday, I will not be able to observe Daylight Saving Time. I have been mom tired for too long to wake up that early, and I fear I would be too grouchy to adequately perform my usual Sunday duties. I will need you to arrive at my home at 7 am (that’s 6 am to your body), get my family up, dressed, and ready for church by 9 am with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. The song is important, as you will need to lead the children of the congregation in their weekly singing time while they’re overtired and cranky. ( Bring sugar free treats and pray.) After church, you’re welcome to race back to my home for a quick snack, which you won’t have time to eat, before you head over to direct choir practice. After that is over, you may nap, as long as you’re prepared to supervise my children in cleaning up all the messes they made while you were resting. You can cap off your day making a delicious meal for my family, washing all the dishes by hand, and “relaxing” during Family Movie Night in which the kids will beg to watch “Cop & ½” or “How the West Was Fun” with little regard to the gray matter dribbling down your earlobes. After this, you’re free to return to the halls of Congress, your lesson learned.

Sincerely, Sarah Clark, Tired Moms of America against Daylight Saving Time