Get ready for the annual time change this Sunday, when everyone turns their clocks back one hour before they go to bed Saturday, Nov. 2 and gets to enjoy an extra hour of sleep on Sunday. Sounds perfectly pleasurable, right.
Not if you are a parent of a young child.
In that case, your liable to be heard yelling, “Fall back – to sleep please!”
People with kids don’t get an extra hour of sleep. Instead they get to get up at 5 a.m. instead of the usual 6 a.m. and try to convince their offspring that their biological clock is all wrong and they actually need to follow the seemingly arbitrary rules set up by people generations ago.
How well do you think that goes?
These are the same kids who then fight going to bed earlier than their usual bedtime, and, especially if they can read the clock, are willing to dig in hard against any shut eye before the appointed time.
Then, instead of waking up the next morning ready for the day and pleased to have an extra hour of zzzs under your belt, you get the pleasure of dealing with sleep-deprived kids, which is a well-known recipe for crankiness.
I’m starting to think Saskatchewan has it right by bucking the trend and holding fast to one time setting, year-round. (Although, I suppose the winter temperatures would be enough to keep me in good old time-change B.C.)
That being said, the time change also signals another mildly depressing change. The arrival of my “polar night,” as it were.
This is when I arrive at work in the dark morning hours, to spend the lion’s share of my day in a windowless office, only to leave again once the sun has set.
For a while there, daylight becomes a pretty rare commodity and I start to resemble a mole, looking confused and blinking wildly when I venture out on a lunch hour.
While we in Salmon Arm can not, for the most part, complain about the severity of our Canadian winter, the lack of bright daylight in the perennially overcast Shuswap does start to make one yearn for the sunny beaches of Cancun or the deserts of Arizona.
For my first few years in Salmon Arm I suffered through the blahs that a good dose of sun might have cured, until I hit upon the most effective winter treatment for me —cross country skiing.
Not only is it excellent exercise, but even better, a lot of the time when you make the drive up to the Larch Hills Ski Area, you emerge from the clouds into glorious sunshine, with the sun glistening like diamonds off the snow and the reflection sometimes so bright you might even want sunglasses.
Snowshoe trails are also an option for those who might find slippery skis daunting.
So if you are feeling the weight of the grey clouds on your shoulders this winter, try heading for the hills.