You'll have to excuse me if I'm slightly incoherent for the next few weeks. Daylight Saving Time has thrown me for a complete loop.

Which I'll be the first to admit is sorta weird. After all, it's only pushing the clocks ahead one hour. Simple mathematics. Maybe the Monday after you're slightly groggy from the lost slice of sleep and perhaps an unchanged clock throws you off until it's corrected, but really, what's the big deal?

Unfortunately, for some of us it's not that easy.

My grasp of time on a typical day is tenuous at best. I don't wear a watch or carry one with me, so I'm reliant upon various time-telling devices located in the environment around me. Which is where the problem begins.

In my apartment - the environment where I spend most of my hours and where time kicks off in a sense - there are five fixed clocks which are always displaying the time: my computer, the microwave and three clocks lined up facing my bed (like a firing squad), two of which are battery-operated and one of which is plugged into the wall.

Instead of keeping me well informed of the time, these five machines work in unison to sow confusion in my time-addled brain. You see, none of the clocks agree as to what the "real" time currently is.

As I write this, my computer tells me it is 6:17 a.m., one of the clocks says 6:18 a.m., a second says 7:27 a.m., the third is flashing and telling me it's 8:02 a.m. and the microwave says it is 6:25 a.m. And that my food is ready.

This discord is half a product of ingenuity and half a byproduct of a character flaw. You see, I lack time management skills. More accurately, I'm what you might call a "slacker." I generally wait until the last minute to do things and leave for destinations at the last possible moment.

Despite repeated attempts at changing my behavior and shifting my schedule to accommodate this massive, repeated shortcoming, I find it nearly impossible to correct on a permanent basis. So the clocks are part of an elaborate ruse, a deception meant to fool me into thinking my time is nearly up sooner than it actually would be.

The system works (in the "barely avoids abject failure" meaning of the word) like this:

(Note: all times are approximate. These exact times may or may not represent times I actually leave/arrive for work. Naturally, I arrive hours earlier than scheduled.)

I wake up at about 8:15 a.m. "real time" most mornings. However, the first clock I can see through bleary eyes upon waking up isn't the one blaring its siren telling me to get up, but the flashing red one which warns me that I'm already running late for work. This, plus the shock of the alarm, springs me into action and I leap out of bed. By the time I realize I've fooled myself, I'm too awake to fall back asleep.

At this point I go through my usual morning routine, eventually ending up in my kitchen for breakfast.

The microwave is part two of the trap. While it may only be 8:45 a.m. real-time, my microwave tells me it's 8:53 a.m. Although I know in the back of my mind that this isn't accurate, it's close enough to the real thing that I'm startled back into action. By the time I'm dressed and out the door, I'm running late for work.

Now, my car's clock is set three minutes faster than the microwave. So in the 10 seconds it takes to walk from my apartment to my car, I've become even later than I conceived.

All of these little lies build up to fool me into action at what seems to be later than the last possible minute. But in actuality, I arrive almost always on time or within two minutes of my goal.

So clearly, you can see how Daylight Saving Time screws up my otherwise perfect system and ends up actually making me "late." Especially on Monday, when I lost an hour of sleep. I tried getting up but was too tired, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Spring forward? Not quite. Fall back? Fast asleep.