I leave the house between 6:45 and 7 am most weekdays. This time of year - and again, in April, when DST starts - it feels like the stinking middle of the night out there. The sun doesn't come up until I am already in class. (And some nights, especially those I have evening meetings? I don't even get to see the sun on the back end).
I had been putting on my porch light, but as the city has been NOT AT ALL CLEAR when trick or treating is...apparently some are saying it's "not" Friday night because of football games, and some are saying it's Thursday, and a few people have even hinted it might be tonight, while others have said, "Nuh-uh, it's Friday," I just gave up.
I didn't buy any candy this year. (And Friday is OAS, so I'll be out of town).
The problem is, "porch light on" represents "welcome trick or treaters." And I don't want disappointed kids - and what's more, I don't want disappointed UNSUPERVISED kids who maybe aren't as well-brought-up as some, if you know what I mean.
So I decided that today, tomorrow, and Friday, I have to leave the porch light off, just in case I don't get home in time to shut it off before the kiddos would be out. (And no. I lack the electrical prowess to wire the thing to a timer - it's controlled by a switch so I'd have to actually break into the wiring of the thing and install the timer on that.)
Well, that was a FAIL. Walking down the porch steps, I only got the heel of my shoe on the bottom one and wound up slipping down the last step. I didn't actually fall, but I did get a bad shock to my one remaining good Achilles tendon.
Daylight Savings Time would be fine if we had a society where most people didn't have to toddle out of bed before 9 am, but I am quite sure that the majority of working Americans are either on their commute or at work before the sun comes up. And that just feels wrong. Going home in the dark does not feel nearly so wrong to me. (And yeah, I know, there are people who go to work in the dark year-round because their commute dictates they leave the house at 4:30 am or some insane hour - but even they'd benefit because it would be marginally less midnight-like when they set out on their commute, if we didn't have DST).
Frankly, I think what we need to do is have some kind of time-compression schedule, where everyone works between 9 am and 3 pm. And fix it so there is affordable and desirable housing in urban areas, so no one has those crazy 2 hour commutes. And where everyone gets one day off per week (outside of the weekend). The idea behind the day off would be that that's the time when you take your car in to the shop, go to the pharmacy, do your grocery shopping...leaving the weekend for more rewarding pursuits. (And the day-off would be staggered...that way, there'd be fewer people out, and there'd be a better chance of actually finding a pharmacy that was open on "your" day off.)
If that was the case, then Daylight Savings might be more appealing to more people. But for some of us, the way it stands now, it just feels like an insult...going out in the dead dark, off to work, with the knowledge that a certain percentage of the money I have gone off to earn is actually going to pay the generous salaries of the very people who voted, a couple of years ago, to extend the period of time during which I must drive to work in the cold dead dark with their "Let's extend DST!" Act.
Anyway. If I ruled the world, there would be no DST. Or if there were, it would be intelligently done, with some kind of averaging of average sun-up and sun-down times across all the time zones, to figure out a start date and an end date that would lead to the smallest number of people having to commute in what feels like the middle of the night.
*****
A couple of photos, one an ongoing project, one a finished project:
First, this:
It's the first (of four) panels of the knit TARDIS. I've started the second already. I want to have this done by Thanksgiving so I can take it with me - Christmas will be at my parents', but Thanksgiving I know will require less stuff hauled in the suitcase (shorter time period = fewer clothes required) so there's more likely to easily be room for it.
The colorwork is not as bad as I thought it would be. The purl side is Not Fun (which is why if I were doing another one of these, I'd cast on for all four sides at once, and do it in the round with a purl stitch between each panel to make the corners), but it's not that bad.
There's also a knit-plain top and bottom, and then a little dealie that you knit and fold up to make the light on the top.
And this is something I knit just for fun:
It's from the Bob pattern at Mochimochiland. (It looks like an animal, but the pattern author points out that it is inspired by the shape of a toilet-tank bobber. She also has a pattern for a roll of toilet paper - no, really* and also a couple of electronics parts (Resisty the Resistor and Captain Capacitor)
(*it would be too late for this year but you could make a bunch of these, make yourself a tree costume - like with a brown tracksuit or something - and attach them to yourself, and be a tp'd tree....)
For my "Bobbette" (Well, she's a girl, you know), I used one of those silly novelty yarns. It's Red Heart "Bijou" which is a fluffy yarn with sparkles. Except the fluffy isn't as soft as you'd think it was.
One thing about this pattern is that the shape is fundamentally pleasing. The curve of Bob's (or Bobbette's, in this case) back feels good in your hand - the toy is a nice size to hold. (I actually think it fits an adult's hand better than it would a child's).
You could also make little "costumes" for Bob to transform him into different animals - big floppy ears would make an elephant, a big bushy tail and tiny little ears would make him an anteater, small pointed ears and a curly tail for a pig...
3 comments:
You must be a night person, like me {sigh}. I work in an office full of morning people and they Just Don't Understand why it's so much harder to get out of bed in the dark.
I remember a bunch of them enthusing at each other once about how beautiful dawn was and how they loved getting up to see it. "You must all be morning people," I commented. "Why, yes," they said. "How do you know?" My response was to say, "Okay, imagine how you feel at eleven at night when you go to bed, all achy and tired. Now imagine that's how you feel every single morning when you have to get out of bed."
There was a second or two of silence, and they all chorused, "Oh, you poor thing1"
I have no problem with DST, I like it in fact, I just hate the shorter days. I especially don't like that it gets dark early in the evening. I can't say why exactly, it's just that when it's already dark at 7 o'clock in the evening (and later in the year even before 6:00!)it feels wrong. I should have more daylight left.
Here, the time change will mean that high schoolers will no longer walk to the their bus stops in darkness in the morning (6:45 a.m.). My kids luckily have the bus stop at our driveway, but I have to turn on the driveway lights so the bus driver will see them, slow down, and pick them up.
-- Grace in MA
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