Whose bed is it anyway?

Last night I was nodding off over an arduous editing job. It was only 8:30. I switched to a somewhat less arduous editing job, thinking it might help me stay awake. No go. At 9:05, I nudged Travvy out of the way and climbed into bed, intending to wake up in the middle of the night and get some more work done.

Which I did. At 1 a.m. I was sipping lemon ginger tea and getting down to work. At 2 I watched my laptop’s clock spring forward to 3, then got up and changed the various time-keeping devices that can’t manage this on their own. At 5 I knocked off work and went back to bed. (Hey, if I worked from 1 until 5, can I bill for four hours instead of three?)

When I woke at about 7:45, the light was about right but the clock said I was running late. I managed to rise, shine (sort of), write for a bit, and then head out for a walk with Trav at about the usual time, 9 a.m. When we got back almost an hour later, the clock was right, but the light said the day was half over and I’d wasted most of it.

Call it Time Change Adjustment Disorder. I’ll get over it.

In my crotchety opinion, “spring forward” shouldn’t happen till April, when spring is clearly on the way. It happened in April all the years of my growing up, so why not now?

I have to admit, however, that spring is on the way. On my walks, I can smell the earth again. Since mid-January, my nose has been too frozen to smell much of anything. This morning I think I smelled a glimmer of green, but this might have been a wishful-thinking-induced hallucination.

If my nose proves unreliable, I’ve got other evidence: the ice disks on my deck.

Two short days ago, I had an octet. For eight consecutive days the temperature hadn’t gone above freezing. Notice, though, that several of the disks look sort of like flat tires, and the one on the far right is barely hanging in there. The temperature wasn’t above freezing, but the disks spent part of each day in direct sunlight, and the direct sunlight was, believe or not, warm.

Cracked disk, garnished with snow

Actually it was nine consecutive days, but on his birthday Trav got overexcited and broke one disk in half. It survived lying flat on the deck for a couple of days, then it melted.

Friday morning, March 7

A mere 24 hours later, the octet was much diminished.

Saturday morning, March 8

And this morning there’s nothing left but two shards and damp spots on the wood.

Sunday morning, March 9

This morning there was only a thin skim of ice in Trav’s outside water dish, so thin I could break it with a forefinger. Prove positive: spring is coming.

Soon I’ll be taking the winter lights down. Since early December they’ve been brightening the darkness. Now that the dark is receding on its own, it’s almost time to put them away for another year.

Nightlife outside my window