My mother told me that daylight savings time was supposed to help the farmers in some way.  I just accepted it at the time, but as I got older, I realized I have no idea how resetting clocks is supposed to help anybody.  There is no real “daylight savings” ... the Earth turns at the same pace it always does, and its tilt will give us more daylight hours in the summer anyway.  Why must they fool around with the clocks?  Why can’t feed store clerks and milkmen and so on just go to work an hour earlier in the summer?  Or stay an hour later?  Or whatever it is that is supposed to help the farmers?

I slept until nearly 9 a.m. (standard time) on Sunday, rising just in time to make a cup of tea and feed the parrot before Meet the Press.  Yet, with all that extra sunlight, I should have been up hours earlier, right?  Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

After MTP, I turned off the television and took Rudie the Dog for a walk.  She promptly fell into every mud puddle there was, and there were quite a few.  On the way back, I noticed we had a bit of wind damage ... the trellis blew over, and the umbrella on the deck was gone, although it turned out Chris had brought it inside because it blew out in the storm.

So after washing the dog, I had to change anyway, so I decided it was high time I did something about my so-called wardrobe.  Now, I have a wardrobe, which might surprise some folks, but I never know what’s in it, because I will keep things I never plan to wear again, like my wedding dress, which is understandable, and my new wave disco clothes from 1979, which is not.  I have old college sweatshirts and t-shirts from every place where I have ever been on holiday, and all the things I used to wear in my ballet classes and modern dance classes and tap classes and you get the idea. 

Although I did give my pointe shoes to my niece a few years back.  Still, what with all the ripped leg warmers and stuff, the drawer fills up, so I got a box and dumped all the sentimental things into it, sealed it and found a place for it in the attic.  The box will probably never be opened again, and that’s just fine with me.  Or maybe one day my niece will need a pair of leg warmers or a pair of pink tights and I will say, “Hey, I know where some are!”

Time has a way of catching up with us.  Why do I keep clothing a quarter of a century old?  Heck if I know.  But the anthropologists who will go through what remains of my house in a thousand years will have a field day ... probably literally.

Among the other priceless items I found as I was perusing my wardrobe were:
•  A pair of jeans that actually fits.  Who would have guessed?
•  Eight Cape Cod t-shirts.  I would have sworn I had eleven.
•  Ten pairs of chinos in various colors, in my size, that I have replaced several times because I couldn’t find them.
• Short sleeved and long sleeved sweaters in every hue that I can wear (which is to say, not pink and not purple).
• Three swimsuits in better shape than the one I am using now.

And after weeding out old stuff and bagging up things for Goodwill that I simply would Never  Wear Again, and feeling particularly virtuous about it, I figured it was high time for another cup of tea and a bit of one of the apple cider donuts I made last weekend but didn’t eat. 

And that is where I was when Chris came home from a full day of work and asked me what I had been doing with myself all day.

All day?  The day has barely started, hasn’t it?

Okay, it was two in the afternoon.  But it certainly felt like ten in the morning.  And yet the light said it was getting on evening.  And to be honest, I hadn’t done much of anything, and I still had to fix the trellis and straighten out the umbrella.

Why will they muck about with the time?  It’s tedious.

After Chris had lunch, we fixed the trellis and the umbrella, and went out to get a light cover for the bedroom.  It turned out to be an easy choice, as there was only one that would fit that had a chain pull. 

And then we separated again, he to go off to a holiday meeting for work, and I to go to the historical society dinner.
I got home while Sixty Minutes was on, and it was a while before I realized that it was running late because of the Patriots game.  I thought it was another time problem.  So Rudie and I switched over to Nature, which is her favorite show, and we learned all about the Valley of the Wolves in Yellowstone Park.

And after it was over, and not before, I set all the clocks back.