Saving Daylight

Saturday night, in the middle of the night, an hour disappeared and, consequently, Sunday stayed bright and sunny an hour later. I think this is a very good idea and can’t understand why we should have to get that hour back in the fall. I’m willing to donate an hour of my life to the cause of extra daylight.

Usually, I have a hard time adjusting to Daylight Savings Time when it begins in the spring. For a week afterwards I am sleepy and feeling like I am running behind schedule. Then in the fall, when we get the hour back, the days seem to go slower and I have this feeling of luxury — that I don’t have to hurry. But all that is minor in the cosmic scheme of things. Let’s just keep things as they are now — a little brighter at the end of the day — and stop all this clock changing nonsense.

Sometimes I wonder how I got to be as old as I am now and still feel like I have done so little in life. This is a thing I seem to be almost constantly aware of since I entered my fifties. Everyone has their own set of experiences. It’s a waste of time to compare your own accomplishments and failures with those of another but it is difficult not to. I’ve lost hours to stupider things than the hour I lost over the weekend and with much less cheerful results than an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day. It seems now, at this point in my life, I’m trying to make up for that. But that isn’t always a good idea either.

Yesterday was beautiful — brilliantly clear and sparkling. The waves were high and, though the thermometer read in the sixties, a brisk breeze kept the day from being too spring-like. Mark and I were out at Cape Hedge drinking coffee and talking and I enumerated all the things I wanted to get done on with the day. “Look,” he said, “why don’t you just take a day off?” A day off? What does that mean?

Recently my sister Anne asked if I ever took a day off from the computer. “Are you one of those people who has to have it on all the time and can’t go more than an hour without checking your email? I couldn’t stand that.” While I do frequently go for several hours without checking email, I admit the computer is usually on from morning until bedtime. Maybe it’s time to rethink this.

So yesterday morning I came home and changed the clocks. I left the computer off. It was a great day to putter at home with a window open to the fragrance of the harbor on the cool breezes. The curtains fluttered and I heard the windchimes ringing in the window for the first time this year. I did some cleaning up. Put away a few winter clothes (fingers crossed on that), cooked a nice lunch, and spent some time on the couch reading. It was nice. I didn’t even turn the radio on. The windchimes were enough.

I’m way behind on directions for the Mermaid Shawl. I’m at the final lace pattern and am having a little trouble re-constructing my original instructions so I worked on that for awhile and think I finally got it. Hopefully this week will see the last lace pattern published here. Then I went in my tiny sewing room and spent the better part of the afternoon organizing my stash, sorting through patterns to find the never-fail ones and tidying up the button box. I’m a compulsive notion buyer on eBay and had recently acquired lots of interfacing, twin needles, more buttons, elastic, etc. that are now all sorted into zip-lock bags, labeled, and waiting for me.

I didn’t turn the computer on all day. I survived. I haven’t checked my email yet this morning but am sure everyone got along without me just fine. The computer will stay on all day today but, now that there is more daylight at the end of the day, I plan to turn the computer off and go outside in the evening. I think we’ll both be better for it.

Thanks for reading.