I have to vote tomorrow...

And I just don't know which box to pick!

Tomorrow is the referendum for - or against - the introduction of Daylight Saving Time to Western Australia.

I've lived here through three and a half summers, but the last three have been during the trial of DST, so I don't really have any memory of what summer is like here without DST. I lived in the tropics before this, where there was very little change in the sun's rising and setting times throughout the year, so moving to a place with "real" seasons and a vast difference in day length between summer and winter really threw me. I remember spending our first winter in Perth mystified by the fact that Jeff wasn't ever home from college before sunset.

I really like the way that when DST begins, my children are no longer waking me up at the ridiculous time of 5:30am. But then again, perhaps the discipline and opportunities of an early start in the summer outweigh the fleshy benefits of a government-sanctioned sleep in.

[edit: I began this post yesterday and didn't get any further than this. So I'm going to finish it up now and post it anyway.

You would think after three years of a trial I would have worked out how I wanted to vote on the issue, wouldn't you? At least given it some thought?

Well, I have had numerous conversations with other people about it. One of my friends, Mrs T, has always said she will vote No. The conversation mostly came up when I was over there for a babysitting swap and they were trying to get the kids down to sleep and it was still light outside. My M-I-L is totally against it, out of sympathy with dairy farmers, I think.

I think I really like it for myself, personally. Mostly because the kids don't wake up so early. I'm not sure that we really do anything extra in the summer to take advantage of the later light. Frankly, the summer days this far down from the equator are so long, having sunset a little later doesn't make all that much difference. It's still going to be "late" in my view of things, even without the change to the clocks. And then, I don't have a job outside the home, so I can chose my own time to begin the day, anyway (well, unless the kids decide it for me).

A few days ago I asked Jeff what he was going to vote, and he said he'd vote "No". I asked him why - I was a little surprised, since in most of the conversations we'd had, we had agreed that it was easier to have the kids getting up "later". He said he had decided that he didn't much care either way, so he was going to vote No because it seemed like the No people were more impassioned about the issue, and cared more about it than the Yes cohort. Upon reflection, I had to agree with him there. I guess that's because most of the people who are telling us to vote No (in the letters page of the newspaper, for instance) are doing it for personal reasons. In contrast, the people who want us to vote Yes are doing so mostly for business reasons: there is a longer overlap of working hours with the eastern states, since they have DST already and have done for years, so it makes business transactions easier. I kinda think if you really want or need to have your business out here in the west, you should be prepared to accept that Perth is an entire continent away from Sydney (4110km, slightly over 2550mi). Not that this will encourage more businesses to migrate here, but still.

So I found myself at the voting booth still not knowing what to write. I walked there, so again, you would think I would have had time to work it out as I walked across the suburb. But we let Joshua and Anna ride their bikes, and the other two went in the double pram, so I spent most of the way watching to see that no-one rode across a road without stopping and waiting for an adult. Didn't think about the vote at all!

When I walked out, Jeff asked me, "What took you so long?" I was almost embarrassed to admit that I hadn't known what to vote so I stood there praying about it for a few minutes before I wrote anything on the paper. In the end, I wrote No. Want to know why?

I prayed, LORD, Please help me to know what to vote. And I just thought, "Know", that sounds the same as "No". Hmm. I think I'll vote No. I'm not sure if this was God answering my prayer or not, but at least now I know that I have taken a stand against my fleshly propensities to desire a morning sleep in. Um, Drat!?!