We love Indiana, and miss very few things about the east coast (mostly family and friends). But Indiana does have one peculiarity that drives us crazy – its time zone.

Indiana is in the eastern time zone. While that is convenient in some respects, it does have its pitfalls. The main one being the fact that during the summer, the sun doesn’t set until after 9:00 pm, and it is light out until almost 10:00 pm.

This makes it very difficult to put children to bed and actually get them to go to sleep.

For years, I’ve been saying I’m going to order shades or sew thicker curtains. I guess Jim finally decided that I wasn’t going to get around to it any time soon. So in typical Jim fashion, he came up with his own solution. This:

Yep, that’s plywood in the windows of my house. He calls them the “dark boards” – no, not “dart boards”. Fortunately they are not attached. We take them in and out as we need to (especially when company is coming).

They are really effective. Absolutely no light gets into the rooms. But it does make me feel kinda trashy to have my windows covered with plywood. I REALLY need to make some time this winter to sew some heavy curtains.