Thanks a lot, Ben.

The first time I went to Australia (before I met Jason), I flew from Atlanta to Denver, had a 2 hour layover, then Denver to LA, another 2 hour layover, then a 14 hour flight to Sydney.  I arrived at 6 in the morning, went to the hotel, and slept for an hour or so while waiting for my mom to fly in from Papua New Guinea, where she was stationed at the time.  She arrived at around noon and we went out and walked around Sydney, took a boat ride on Sydney Harbor, went to see an opera at the Opera House,* and then finally went back to the hotel to go to bed.  We got up at 6 in the morning to climb the Sydney Harbor Bridge and then rented a car to drive into the Blue Mountains west of Sydney to go hiking and look at waterfalls.

Only at around 6 that evening, when we were lounging in our hotel room, did the travel and activity and 14-hour time difference catch up with me.  I passed out and slept for 13 hours.  Then I was fine, and we had a lovely trip.

I appear to have lost my time-change-battling mojo.  Because the recent "spring ahead" to daylight savings time is completely. kicking. my. ass.

Sunday morning we woke up and were supposed to be at my cousin's house for brunch at 10:30.  I got up with Josie and was sitting giving her a bottle while watching the previous night's episode of Saturday Night Live, only to be shocked when I pressed the "info" button on the remote control to find that it was already 9:37.  Shit!  We needed to get moving!

We started buzzing around, taking showers, dressing the children, dressing ourselves, only to glance at the clock and see that it was only 9:00.  And I was all "dooooh?" like a confused Scooby Doo.

So we calmed down and slowed down, thinking we had an hour before we needed to leave.

In other words, I assumed DirecTV had the time wrong.  It never occurred to me that, oh yeah, it's mid-March and there's this thing that Benjamin Franklin thought of a couple hundred years ago to change the clocks during the summer and of course the time on the cable box and the cell phones is never wrong and I seriously think my brain is broken.

When it finally dawned on me what was going on, we called the cousins, explained our stupidity, no problem, and we went and had a lovely time seeing them and their new baby.

But I've felt all discombobulated and just off ever since.  My days feel hurried and then slowed down, I can't figure out how to get Zeke's bedtime on track, I'm not sleeping and then when I do I have an impossible time waking up.

It's only a fucking hour.  It's shouldn't be such a big deal.

God help me the next time I have to travel to another time zone.

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*Mozart's The Magic Flute, which sucks even when you see it in the Sydney Opera House.