I think this year they took more than an hour when they changed us over to Daylight Saving Time. If we’d stayed awake and watched closely, I think we would have seen that they took more like two or three hours. And for what? So that we can look up at 7:30 p.m. and think, “Oh, my God. Didn’t I just eat lunch, and now it’s supposedly time for dinner.”

I personally don’t think it was a good enough trade, losing an hour just to get a vestige of sunlight at 7: 30 p.m.

I keep seeing headlines of stories that claim this benefits us in some kind of environmental energy non-global warming way that Al Gore would approve of, and that that’s why we had to do this while there was still snow on the ground instead of when it’s closer to summer–but I frankly don’t understand it. In fact, I have NEVER understood how it helps anything to steal time from us. We Americans are a tired people, already crabby and sleep-deprived, and we can’t tolerate this kind of tinkering with our sanity.

But this could just be the strep throat talking.

Yes. One day during the middle of the week, when I was happily writing at my friend’s house along with lots of other writers–the kind of people who know how to Set A Good Example, productively typing away on their various novels and not making eye contact with anyone who might want to waste a little time…well, there I was, writing fast and furious, when I suddenly awakened from a dream and realized that I had just spent two hours of valuable writing time sound asleep in an armchair, drooling. And that I was shivering and burning up at the same time. And that my throat was killing me.

And so…yes, it turned out to be strep throat, and I have been on antibiotics now for four days, and although I am so much better, I am still not better in the way that means I ever want to do anything again. My energy level is approximately at one-eighth-mast, and the characters in my novel–like wayward children–have taken advantage of my illness to go off and do other things with their lives. I checked in with them this afternoon, and the main guy character right away started in complaining that he didn’t say anything that I claimed he said. Nothing about him was right, he claimed. I had his personality all wrong, wrong, wrong. 

He said he was a much nicer person than I had been representing him and that he wanted to go right now and start making out with the other main character whom he already could tell he loved, and I said, “Sam, you and I both know that you’re a great guy, but you’re messed up, honey, and this is only page 237, and so it’s not until a hundred  more pages that you get to make out with her. Right now you’re still fighting with her. AND, don’t forget, you’re still engaged to someone else anyway, and you’ve got to settle all that before you start in with this other woman…”

He said, “Just write that fiancee right out of the plot. I never liked her anyway.”

I said, “WRITE HER OUT OF THE PLOT? Are you freaking kidding me? You may not like her now, but you did like her, and you asked her to marry you and she accepted, and now you’re just going to have to get out of it. I see that taking you at least thirty-five pages, and that’s if you do it swiftly and don’t have lingering regrets.”

He huffed himself off, saying he’s already reformed himself and that he wants to just settle down right now with the other main character…and I yelled after him that what kind of book did he think that would be? “There are no shortcuts to character development, so you just cool your jets if you want a nice love affair with that woman,” I told him. “These things take time! You can’t rush into this.”

Then he said a really mean thing: He pointed out that we don’t have time for this. Our deadline is coming up, he said. Not only did I sleep through three days last week when I was supposed to be helping him get out of his engagement…but now I’ve lost a valuable hour to Daylight Savings Time.

I know what that means:  for the next three months, no matter what it looks like outside, it is always time to go cook another meal.