Time Crunch

All three of us forgot to spring forward – me, my husband, the dog.

Ron woke up first. “Holy crap. It’s 9:40,” he said.

I rolled onto my back and stretched into a yawn.

“The dog hasn’t been out in eleven hours,” he said.

The dog could’ve cared less. She was passed out on her lumpy green dog bed, a pile of drool under her snout, as if she’d spent the previous night knocking back tequila shots.

Ron roused her and dragged her outside. Then the three of us dilly-dallied around the apartment, finally migrating to the kitchen for French toast.

“Yay, yay, yay,” I sang, slipping around the tile floor in my socks. “We never sleep in and eat French toast. This is fun.”

The dog licked powered sugar off my fingers with her scratchy tongue.

“Holy crap,” Ron said. “It’s almost noon. Can that be right? We’re just now finishing breakfast.”

And so went the rest of the day, narrated by Ron. The man is obsessed with time, always has been.

“Holy crap, look at the time, I never went to the gym.”

“Holy crap, look at the time, I never bought milk.”

“Holy crap, look at the time, we’re running late for church.”

This last statement grabbed my attention, only because I was still in my pajamas. We attend a 5:30 late afternoon service (in my defense, I’d been writing most of the day).

“Well I’d better get-a-movin’ and jump in the shower,” I said.

Among the steam, shaving my leg, Ron poked his head around the curtain.

“Guess what?” he said.

“What?” I said.

“We forgot to spring forward.”

That explained a lot.

Actually, it wasn’t that we forgot to spring forward, it was that we didn’t realize we had already been sprung. Our computers and cell phones and cable boxes are all programmed to automatically propel us from standard time to daylight saving time.

“So that’s why today felt so screwy,” Ron said, relieved that the numbers on our clocks made sense again.

The dog didn’t care. And frankly, I didn’t either. I’m tired of being ruled by time. I remember saying to my therapist last year: “You know what I’d love? I’d love to throw away my alarm clock and stop wearing my watch. Instead of living by a schedule, I’d love to sleep when my body tells me she’s tired and eat when she tells me she’s hungry and take a walk when she tells me she needs some fresh air.”

Based on how much I enjoyed my sleeping-late, French-toast-munching, write-to-my-heart’s-content day on Sunday, I think I was onto something.