Permanently disgruntled

School starts next Tuesday and all of our staying up late with a hey-nonny-nonny and sleeping until nine are over, just over.

The girls have been going upstairs at 9:30 in the evenings, turning their lights out at 10:00. Next week, it will be upstairs by 9:00, lights out at 9:30. My husband and I will be able to canoodle on the sofa again; for the past couple of months of summer vacation, the girls have been downstairs so late, the only canoodling we've been able to do is this:

"Will you press the button on the remote to shut the TV off?"

"No. I am too tired."

"C'mon. Please? I did it last night."

"No, I can't. I'm half asleep."

"Okay. On the count of three, let's stand up. One...two...three...!"

[neither of us stands up]

"Cheater!"

"DOUBLE cheater! You were the one who counted!"

"Let's just leave the television on all night and conserve our energy for climbing the stairs."

The girls have been going to bed early enough that my husband and I have had our lights turned out by eleven o'clock for about five nights running. Even though I am a night owl, I can reconcile myself to that.

What I cannot reconcile is stupid Daylight Savings Time which makes it practically pitch-dark at 6:30 in the morning when the alarm goes off. Why do we have to put up with this?

About eight years ago, I spent a week with Susie when she lived in Charleston, South Carolina. I didn't know about Daylight Savings Time back in those innocent days and one morning I woke up at 7:00 a.m. to pitch darkness and I thought the apocalypse had happened. Susie found this screamingly funny and was stunned and astonished when I quaveringly told her that I lived in a place where it was broad daylight at 5:00 a.m. and what was wrong with this benighted place, anyway?

Now I know.

Indiana is similarly benighted.

Getting up in the morning is punishing enough without having to get up in the dark. In August. Dark mornings are for December, January and February, when it may as well be dark because there's nothing much to do outside anyway.

Equally silly is watching the sun set at 9:35 p.m. Everyone just wants some shade, already. We've seen the hot sun glaring down on us all day. Just....go. Shine on someone else for awhile. This is not Finland. Geez. My younger nephew, Dayden, took this "white night" phenomenon very hard because he kept thinking that Pat and Angie were punishing him by putting him to bed when it was so obviously still daytime.

"What did I do?" he wailed to them, crying stormily as they tucked him in. "I'll be good! I don't know why I was bad!"

Try explaining Daylight Savings Time to a kindergartner. I don't even understand why we have to have it. I ought to be crying too. Maybe I will, tomorrow morning at 6:30.