The Elusion of Time

I was thinking this week how now that the grass is green (and tall!! DH had forgotten that the battery on the mower died last fall and that he needed to buy a new one before he could mow once the grass started growing again), and the trees also are green with unfurling leaves, and it stays light until after 9 p.m., that I don't wake up in the morning feeling this overwhelming need to rush rush rush in order to get my daily to-do list accomplished.  Not that I'm moving in slo-mo, but almost like the day is.  It feels like my day is so much longer, so much less harried. Almost like I have all the time in the world.

It is amazing what long hours of day light can do.  In the winter months, I feel so confined, so pressured, and in retrospect I think it has a lot to do with what I need to pack into the few hours of daylight each day.  We have electricity and lights, of course, but it isn't the same for me as working in natural light.  When it's dusky, I'm tired.  When the sun is up (even if it's obscured by clouds, like it is the majority of the winter months), I'm trying to not only do barn work as my job, but also the housework and outdoor work at home. And then, before DH is even home from work so we can have dinner, it's dusky and I'm tired again.  There stretches a long evening, several hours between dinner and bed time, that I try to accomplish things, but with lamps on and darkness out every window and in the corners, it always feels like there is just too much to do and not enough time.

Now, though, that we're well past the spring equinox, and daylight hours seriously outnumber the hours of darkness in each twenty-four we get, I have to remind myself that it's 9 p.m., time to quit working and relax a little before crawling into bed.  I'm not yawning at 5 p.m.  and longing for my bed by 8:00; no, I'm still bustling around at 8:00 happy as a clam in my endeavors.  It's almost like I elude time; like it can't find me, can't tie me down the way it does in the darker months.

It's a wonderful, freeing sense of being.