spring forward

Do you know what this weekend is? It is the weekend that makes me forget a long winter. It is time to spring forward! Quit the complaining about that lost hour of sleep, you will recover and the extra Vitamin D will do you good. When I was growing up we celebrate daylight savings. So until I moved to California 16 years ago I had no idea how amazing springing forward could be. I am not as big a fan of fall back but I can handle it for the pleasure of magically getting one more hour of daylight right when I want it.

For years there were only a few states that didn't participate in daylight savings. Indiana, Arizona and Hawaii. Hawaii makes sense it is pretty laid back and not on a strict clock schedule. Arizona...can anyone explain half the things Arizona does? Then there is Indiana. Farm country, old school farm country. Farmers wanted their daylight in the morning to do their chores not in the evening and for years that stuck. 

Pockets of the state actually did participate in daylight savings prior to then entire state switching a few years ago. The lower right corner, or as others would call it the southeast corner,  stuck with east coast time because it needed to stay in sync with Cincinnati. The upper left, or northwest corner, stuck with central time to stay in time with Chicago. Imagine the dilemma...the time changes and you commute from Gary, IN to Chicago and you have to set your watch backwards and forward to and from work. I am confused just thinking about it. The rest of us in the middle of the state we yo-yo'd from time zone depending on the time of year. Part of the year we were eastern standard time. Then we were central time. For some reason the TV programming didn't change with us and was always on eastern time. I can't begin to tell you how many tv shows I missed because of this.  The Cosby show was no longer on at 8pm instead it was on at 7pm and there was no DVR to help you remember that in those days. Kids have it so easy these days. Enough about how hard I had it as a kid walking up hill in the snow both ways to get to school. 

I am really excited about daylight savings time. There are so many great benefits of springing forward:

• The light will not come beaming into my bedroom until 8am allowing me to sleep in a little on the weekend.
• When I get off work I will still have time to fire up the grill and cook before I am grilling in the dark
• I can garden when I get home
• I will still have daylight to do projects outside when I get home from work
• It signals summer is really around the corner

I really love this time of year. Even if you are currently dredging through what is hopefully your last snow storm, maybe the changing of clocks will put that spring in your step.