Setting back our clocks is an act of torture.

This isn't hyperbole. If you visit a torture chamber at one of the historically preserved heritage sites, such as Williamsburg, Virginia, or Medieval Times restaurant, you will surely find a pillory, and next to that, I'm confident you'll find a clock in need of changing.

The annual act of setting back our clocks is maddening. And it's only getting worse. When I was a child, my parents would stay up to the appointed time of 2 a.m. and then strategically walk around the house changing every clock to the new time, starting with the watches on their wrists. Nowadays we're all so plugged in that half our devices change automatically. Who can remember to update the rest?

Suddenly, it's January, and you're sitting in your living room scrolling through your iPod, which clearly reads 7:52 a.m., when you notice that the time on the wall clock reads 8:52 a.m. Oh, no! Panic sets in. Are you late for work or not? You quickly check your fitness bracelet. It reads 8:52. But the microwave says 7:52. Sure, you could just check your phone, but at this point, you are too confused to think straight and are wondering whether you're running too late to throw on pants before heading to work. If you are in fact late. Which you're not sure that you are. You bolt to the car, turn on the engine and see 8:52 pop up on the radio. Uh-oh, the boss hates tardiness! Pants be damned!

Thirty minutes later, you're sitting in human resources, a banker's box holding all your personal items strategically placed over your bare legs, staring at a clock that reads 8:22 a.m.

You wonder whether the cops will believe that the time difference made you do it.

Making someone lose track of time is a form of torture. As is lack of sleep.

"Fall back" brings about earlier evenings and earlier mornings. I hate leaving work when it's already dark outside, but at least there are a few perks to the winter evenings. Early darkness lends itself to movie nights. To baking cookies. To curling up with a good Kindle. Not that I do any of these things, but I could.

There are no such perks for early onset mornings.

Clearly, the inventor of daylight saving time — and thus also our return to "regular" time — did not have children. Anyone who had a child would have known never to invent something that would cause children to wake up earlier. Wasn't that one of the golden rules of "Gremlins"? Stay away from water and don't set back the clocks?

I looked up the creator of time shifts and found a New Zealander named George Vernon Hudson at the epicenter of my disgruntled disposition. From my thorough three to five minutes' worth of research, I found that he was not a father but rather an entomologist. Which is fitting, because his creation bugs the dung beetle out of me.

Look, George, I don't know what it's like for you folks in New Zealand — everyone knows that you folks have a weird thing with sheep, so maybe you're against counting them — but Americans like sleep. And do you know what helps sleep? Having children who sleep. Do you know what helps children sleep? Darkness. A darkness that you just abruptly took away an hour earlier from my mornings.

Here is what my mornings looked like last week:

SNOOOOOOOOORE. Beep, beep! The alarm clock goes off. Hit "snooze." Snore. Beep, beep! Hit "snooze." Snore. Beep, beep! Hit "off." Get up. Get dressed. Finish morning routine. Wake my son. The sun rises.

Since we fell back an hour, this has become my morning:

Sun rises. WAAAAAAAAAAA. (That's my toddler audibly crying, not me. I'm crying on the inside.) Get up. Get my son. Change his diaper. Get him dressed. Make him breakfast (read: unwrap his breakfast). Get myself ready. Beep, beep! The alarm goes off — for the first time. Hit "off."

How are we supposed to live like this? Parents need alone time before the children wake. What about our morning exercise regimen? Reading the morning newspaper? Making a well-rounded breakfast? Not that I do any of these things, but I could.

Soon I'll start a campaign to count time changes as a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Until then, does anyone know where I can get cheap blackout curtains? And an employment lawyer?

Like Katiedid Langrock on Facebook, at http://www.facebook.com/katiedidhumor. Check out her column at http://didionsbible.com. To find out more about Katiedid Langrock and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.