I’d like to dedicate this post to Daylight Savings Time

Our Spring Break officially started at 2:00 p.m. Friday afternoon and we started it off much like I used to start the Spring Breaks of my past, except instead of heading to the beach with a pack of Zima and suntan oil (Note to 20-year-old self, you will regret both of those decisions later in life), we went to Pizza Hut to meet with Caroline’s t-ball team.

This is our first foray into the team sports arena or field or whatever, so we are excited. Everyone knows most colleges offer lucrative athletic scholarships for t-ball players and we feel pretty sure we have a prodigy on our hands. Never mind the fact that she’s most excited about her pink baseball glove and hopes the uniforms aren’t brown, I have no doubt she will be totally into the mechanics of the game once the season starts.

When we arrived at Pizza Hut, we met her coach and the other players and parents. Most of the kids already knew each other because they all go to the same school. Caroline was beyond excited that her “boyfriend” from her class is also on her t-ball team. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by “boyfriend”, but judging from their interaction at Pizza Hut, I believe it means that you take turns hitting each other on the head and laughing a lot with pizza hanging out of your mouth. It made me so nostalgic for the days when P and I first started dating and did that exact same thing.

The coach informed us that our first practice would be the next day at 10:00 a.m. As parents we were all supportive and said, “Dude. It’s the first Saturday of Spring Break and it’s just t-ball. We’re not looking for anything other than a reason to hang out at the little league fields and eat snow cones on Saturday afternoons.” So he postponed practice until the following week and then probably went home to make some calls to see if he could coach a team of kids with parents who have goals and ambition.

One of Caroline’s best girl friends is also on the team and after the meeting she came home with us to spend the night. This was the first official sleepover for both girls and my friend Julie and I kept calling each other with updates until the girls fell asleep after hours of giggling and coloring Disney Princess pictures and we realized it was actually going to happen.

They wanted to sleep on air mattresses on the floor of my bedroom, which I bet won’t be the case when they’re thirteen.

Of course, with all the Caller ID technology these days, it takes the fun out of the primary sleepover activity of calling boys and hanging up on them. Plus, you can’t call the local radio station and dedicate REO Speedwagon songs because who listens to the radio anymore? And for that matter, who listens to REO Speedwagon besides people over thirty-five?

On Saturday I was exhausted from all the sleepover fun, but I had to make a trip to HEB because we were having some friends over for dinner and I figured they probably didn’t want peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Caroline went with me and I bought her a new coloring book in exchange for the promise that she’d let me take a nap. And she was true to her promise other than the forty-seven times she woke me up to ask if I thought Cinderella’s dress should be purple or blue.

Our friends came over on Saturday night and we had a great time. It had been forever since we’d all been together so we thoroughly enjoyed catching up on each other’s lives. In fact, we threw caution to the wind and hung out until 9:30 p.m. even though we knew it was really 10:30 with the looming time change, but we felt like it was worth it because otherwise we wouldn’t have had time to discuss our denture cream and arthritis.

Then came Sunday morning and Daylight Savings time officially killed my weekend buzz. I don’t know why the government insists on taking the extra hour away from us every spring, but I am certain it’s because no one in Congress remembers what it’s like when you’re trying to recover from listening to two five-year-old girls laugh into all hours of the night and then demand blueberry pancakes at 6:45 a.m.

It’s enough to make me reach for a Zima.