Have you adjusted to the time change yet? At least, we all got an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning.
But, chances are, we spent that extra hour changing our clocks and watches (if we still have them).
I have three watches. One, I never got around to changing when daylight savings time kicked in, so that one’s ready to go. Except, now it needs a new battery. I have at least 14 clocks. That’s not counting the wonderful new-fangled clocks that change themselves – my computer, my cell phone, my television.
But then, there are all the others. Several of them don’t count. I have four clocks that will never work again. One is a bird clock that tweets a different bird every hour. At least, it used to. I bought it for my mother years and years ago. She loved it. Now, it no longer tweets, or even keeps time. Still, I cannot bring myself to throw it away. I have two wonderful clocks with flamingos, that friends gave me. They stopped working long ago, too, but I can’t bring myself to toss them. I like the way they look hanging on the wall. One of them only has one hand, yet I find myself consulting it from time to time. (Pardon the pun).
Oh yeah – there is another clock that no longer keeps time of any sort. But I will never, ever get rid of it. My mother made it in ceramics class 40-some years ago, and my father, a really good artist, etched and decorated it into a whale that, if you look closely, forms the word “Margo.” I ask you: How could I possibly get rid of it? I cannot.
Finally, there is a great little clock – quite nice, made of walnut – with a helicopter as a second hand. Armand Sikorsky, of helicopter fame, gave it to my father decades ago. Every so often, I get it working again, for a few hours. Still, I cannot and will not get rid of it.
The working clocks include one on the porch, one in my office, one in my bedroom, one in my den, one in a bathroom, and two in the kitchen. Of those two, one is on the stove, and is easy to change. The one on the microwave is quirky. The “0” is no longer able to be “activated,” so if it’s 5:06, I’ve got to wait five minutes to reset it. It’s an old microwave, and should have been replaced several years ago … but, I’m retired. I’m learning what the phrase “fixed income” means.
The clock in my car is rather a lost cause. Even after many years, I still have to look up how to change the time. Also, this clock runs fast. It gains 13 minutes before you even know it. I don’t mind. I like to get somewhere and discover I’m a little early. And, it keeps my mind sharp, doing the math to subtract 13 minutes from whatever time the clock decrees it is. I spend a lot of time doing math in the car.
Anyway, on Sunday, I spend about an hour changing the clocks. I finally got it all done, with the approximately correct time on each one. I felt I’d accomplished something!
Sunday night at 6:47 (I knew the time exactly!), the power went out. Oh geez. All that clock-changing for nothing!
When the power returned about two hours later, I went around and changed the clocks yet again. During the night, though, the power went off yet again. So, on Monday morning, I had my task ahead of me for the third time.
Time … you’ve gotta love it – except twice a year!
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