Dark days

I long for Daylight Savings Time and it hasn't been gone for 24 hours yet.True, it used to be the time change was in October. So I should be grateful. But whether the clocks fall back last month or this, it amounts to the same thing. Dark days. 

I've been told that the reason for this peculiar manipulation of time (besides the power trip) has to do with children falling into manholes on their way to school on mornings left dark by Mother Nature. Mother Nature? That's a joke. Everyone knows you can't fool Mother Nature. Or beat her. So if children on their way to school no longer fall into manholes (why, a thoughtful person might ask, were the covers off those manholes, anyway?) then they most certainly will fall off curbs on their way home in the pitch black.

We do have a couple of weeks (but only that) until 4p is on the threshold of night. Back when I was in graduate school in England, I remember this time of year well: I'd be in the library studying before the crack of dawn and it would be dark when I emerged in mid-afternoon. I might as well have stayed in the womb. At least there it was warm as well as dark.

So now that the clocks have changed we, any of us, can hardly be accused of wasting our days. There isn't enough left of the day to waste. On the other hand, the night owls of the world have a broader palette on which to work. Those allergic to sun have only nine or so hours to suffer.

By 4:08 today I was forced to try to explain to Cajun why her dinner was not only eight minutes late but would be another 52 minutes in coming. At six p.m. when we sat down to an unusually early dinner, it looked (and felt) closer to eight p.m. At two p.m. when I took Cajun out for her afternoon exercise, the sky looked ominously gray, both from lack of light and the hint, just a hint but a cloying one, of snow in the air.

I try to be faithful to November, it being my birth month. I work to make it my favorite, out of perverse and unrewarded loyalty. But it is not anybody's favorite month. Least of all mine. It's a long long slog to longer, warmer days. With a whole lot of nonsense in between.

No wonder bears hibernate. 

Truffle: A simple Sunday with all things in place — NYTimes crossword, french toast, football, popcorn, even a little time outside (sitting down) with the dog.

Quote of the day: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." (Groucho Marx)

 

Comments

[Sue Curtin]

Ah, the exigencies of English! Groucho knew them well, as did Yogi Berra. Thank goodness.
Hint: go to bed when it's dark!

[Kate Stout]

I tried that. And was up before it was light. 

[vicki]

Falling into manholes?? That's one I've never heard before. It galls me that the government types claim we're somehow saving energy with all this clock turning nonsense--we have to turn on lights, one way or the other, when it's dark--either in the dark morning, or in the dark evening--but very soon it's both. The whole business irks the heck out of me and I wish they would just stop, and leave the clock alone. It's a stupid--and in the spring when we "loose" an hour and all those cross commuters are even sleepier as they drive--dangerous bit of bamboozling "they" do to us. Let us just live with the real rising and setting of the sun, please.