Goodbye to All That

This is how things looked at the lake we visit. I took this picture last weekend. Just last weekend!The warm morning light on the railings, the topaz hue of the leaves...Then at afternoon's end, there was this view from the end of a dock:How does the heart not break when one looks at such beauty? Especially now that Sandy  has come like an avenging angel sweeping all before her.God's own leaf blower is a hurricane.We wake to a wider sky today.More light, with the foliage gone.More light, in the day's early portion at least, with the thudding new arrival of Daylight Savings in the wee hours of this morning.I woke at 3:45 and never slept again. Don't know why.I wandered the house watering a few thirsty plants, then brought coffee back into my bed and read my book.The plants can't say they're crazy about being brought inside now that I've closed up the screened-in porch.Being next to a radiator is especially hard for them.But it's adapt or falter in this world. Out in the porch this peace lily would be frozen brown stalk in less than a month .And so it is with us. Adapt or falter.Get out of bed now. Sweep the leaves from your stoop.  Do your errands early so you can feel cozy when the night once again lowers.And think of all who, a week after the storm, still have no light or heat.

The Times They are a-Changin'

Man, there's nothing easy about this time change!  I got in the bed Saturday night at 9:00 and watched the news (terrifying as usual) while inserting photos into my 2010 album, a tedious and painstaking task long postponed. I turned out my light at 10:20.Someplace in there Old Dave, surfeited at last after his standard weekend marathon of Man TV (hoops, golf, hockey etc. etc.) crawled into bed beside me, turned out his light and said “Give it a  rest T! It’s 11  at night!”  (He likes to round up like that, to make me seem crazier than I am.)But here’s the question: WAS it 11:20 already in a way, or was it still 10:20? The Time Gods hadn’t yet turned the clocks back after all. And when I woke and got a drink of water at 1:30 they still hadn’t turned them back, so at what point did it start being an hour later? 2am on the dot you say? That just seems weird.It confuses me every year. I said to David Friday morning during  his shower - I opened the shower door to ask him this, that's how pressing a question it was -  I said, “Explain this to me again. I know at night we’ll all be thinking ‘Man it looks so early, this is great!’ when in fact it isn't early at all. But what about in the morning? Will it be harder to get up then and easier to go ot sleep at night? Is THAT how it works?”“Bad news,  T: it’ll be harder to get up in the morning and harder to get to sleep at night.”  What kind of a deal is that?My last act of the day Saturday was to go to the kitchen and change the time on the microwave. The next morning I was up before David; I always am. He found me tapping away on my keyboard in the dining area.“So the time in the kitchen's ALL screwed up,” he said mildly .“All screwed up! But I changed it last night!” I said.“Yup,” he said studying the little numbers. “You pushed it back an hour.”All which leaves me wondering: how on earth did I get all those A's back in high school?