I am not what you would call
great
at what I call
calendar math.
I mean, I can teach it well.
Don’t worry about that.

But ask me how many days or hours until something and I’ll do some,
what some people have called,
crazy math.

“Well, 1:15 to 2:15, 2:15 to 3:15, 3:15 to 4:15…” I’ll say as I hold up my fingers. Knowing full well that I could also do 4-1.
I just really want to feel the cycle of that hour, I guess. It needs the X to X verbal cue and a little circle gesture.

It has taken me months to remember that when my daughter talks to her boyfriend in Japan, he’s saying good morning and she’s saying goodnight. We wake up on Saturday but I can find out if his team won their Saturday night game. What!?!

One time I made a joke asking if he could time a flight to Japan so that he could celebrate his birthday twice. My kids rolled their eyes at me, but he said, “Actually that happened once when I was a kid…”

I think it’s like magic, to be honest.

So when it’s time to change the clocks?
Not my favorite.
Not because I have to change many actual clocks anymore… but it’s just so mind bending to me.
For days I’ll say things like “Well, it would really be 8, but it’s 9, but it feels the 8, right?”

So imagine how I felt when I realized that our road trip to Florida was going to have us cross time zones just hours before the clocks changed.

As we drove closer and closer to our destination, I kept watching the clock on my phone, waiting for it to jump.
Finally it did. But it was so confusing.

What was 4:00 became 3:00, but in just a few hours that 3:00 would become 4:00 again, which would feel regular, but back home it would be … 5:00? Wait. Is there a diagram for this?

And what about those calls to Japan? It had been a 14 hour time difference, but then it became a 15 hour time difference for just a bit, then it went back to 14 hours. But back home, after the time change, I think it’s 13 hours?

“15 hours!” My daughter said it was the longest time difference they had had so far.

My son said, Well once you go past a 12 hour time difference, it sounds like it’s a bigger difference but it’s really a smaller difference because it’s getting closer to 24 hours which is no big deal because then you are just like a day different, but the time is pretty close. Like who cares if it’s Monday here and Tuesday there if it’s 8:00 am in one place, and 7:00 am in the other?

I tried to understand, I did. But I decided that if I am going to understand that, it won’t be after 10 hours in the car.

Once we unpacked, as we were trying to decide on timings and schedules, someone asked about the time change again.

“You gotta spring back!” I said, and my kids looked at me disappointedly. As they should have.

They yelled at me.

“Mom! You spring FORWARD! Maybe you shouldn’t be in charge of our schedule.”

And that’s what long road trips do to my already calendar-confused brain.