Exhausted Parents' Rant Against Standard Time (EPRAST)

Let's take a trip back in history, shall we? Circa 5 years before kids. End of daylight savings time? No prob. In fact, an event not unanticipated with some degree of hope: the magical extra hour of sleep, combined (at least for some time) with not waking up to such complete darkness every morning.

Let's now shake off those memories and come back to today: the official end of daylight savings time. It goes something like this:
5:23 am. Vasco cheerily walks into our bedroom. I sob (my turn to get up with the kids today), and try to convince Vasco it is still the middle of the night (it feels like it!!! it looks like it!!), and Mike bravely walks him back to his bed. Mike returns in a few minutes, sanz Vasco, and a delicous quietness settles in, which makes me drool from excitement as I fall -- no, plummet! --back to sleep.
6:33 am. "Mommy?" I fall out of bed, decide against the extra effort of grabbing my glasses, and stumble-run-Elaine-dance over to the kids' room and flop myself on Vasco's bed. "Honey, 10 more minutes and you can get up." The stealthy surprise attack must have confused him for a few minutes (which I gratefully use to happily sleep-drool on his stuffed animals I am cleverly using as a pillow!), but then he recovers: "Mommy, can I get up?" I ask, desperation and hope intricately mixed in my voice: "You are not sleepy? There is no way you are falling back asleep?"... 2 minutes later we are in the kitchen, pouring cereal. As I set the clocks back on various timers in the kitchen, back to 6:59 am, I quietly weep.
What follows is a list of what transpired next: baking a cake layer (tomorrow is Mike's birthday), cartoons, Sunday school, a long run (me), hardware store trip, lunch, random tree/bush climbing, a long run (Mike), my pure genius potato stamp crafts (which would have been much more successful had we not run out of paint to dip them in 3 weeks ago!), run to the store for eggs, second cake layer baked. Club houses constructed from dining room chairs and blankets, the destruction of the couch, and an apparent relocation of every single book from the bookcase.

I look at the clock: it winks and it mocks me: 3:15???!!! ARE YOU KIDDING????!!!

At 5:10pm, as we are already enveloped in midnight-quality darkness, I am making dinner as Mike prepares our "comfort juice" (aka Mike's homemade ROCKING margaritas).

So here I am at 6:15, said dinner and margarita consumed, sharing a rant, and half-laughing, half-sobbing at Mike's attempt at humor: "Okay, kids, only 69 minutes till bath time".