Ten hours of Sunlight

I check the weather report every morning, as most people do I suppose; as I’m drinking my coffee and deciding what I’ll wear for the day.  It has become part of my morning ritual – once the weather and traffic report are shown I turn the TV off and go about my day.  One of the interesting things about our local weather guy is, in addition to weather and tidal information (very important this time of year in CA) he gives a little bit of extra information, sometimes to do with Astronomical events happening like a meteor shower or what planets are really visible, sometimes it’s a tidbit about Baseball – mostly little league because that’s what his kids play, and sometimes if you catch it at the right time he will tell you how many hours of sunlight are in the day.  As a person with night blindness, I tell you, watching the number go down as we head into the deepest dark of winter makes me cringe.  I start to think about all of the things that won’t get done because I’ll be rushing home just barely making it before full dark sets in, and many days I pray my way through the traffic disasters, wondering if today will be the day I get stuck behind one and have to white knuckle it all the way to the house.  This morning though we hit a new high, a little more than 10 hours of daylight!  10 hours I decided I could work with.  I’m noticing that the sky is pink toward the beginning of my drive to work and the morning star is harder and harder to find these days.  And – I actually have at least an hour of light (not full mind you – but light just the same) after I get home, giving me time to move out to my garden and pull a few weeds or turn soil before I can’t see what I’m doing anymore.  Even though we’re still bitterly cold, and spring is a long way off, for a few minutes each afternoon I have a small reprieve in my back yard and a feeling of wellbeing takes over – I have made it through another dark winter, sigh, I can breathe again when I drive back and forth to work, deeper sigh, and soon, I’ll be able to start working in all of the things I’ve missed out on during the long dark nights.  10 hours of sunlight – doesn’t seem like a lot but to me it is the tipping point to spring even more so than the mark on the calendar designating that day.

Why do they schedule things at inconvenient times?

On my way into work this morning I was listening to a DJ complain that he had missed a big football game this last weekend because his daughters Soccer game was scheduled at the same time. He was lamenting to the group that there should be more consideration in scheduling, he’s trying to be a good dad, he wants to be a good dad but it’s hard to be 100% a good dad when people don’t take into consideration scheduling of the parents.


I chuckled to myself at this – thinking back to when the girls were small and played youth soccer, remembering having to be at the field by 7am on Saturday and Sunday mornings for games and wondering who in God’s name was making the schedule? What person in their right mind gets a 7 year old up and out of the house to be somewhere that early in the morning and enjoys it? Needless to say the girls only wanted to do one season of soccer and thank goodness for that because as a young parent there was no way I could keep up with my partying at night and trying to make it through a game of screaming little people with a hangover.

Now that the girls are older, there’s a little more wiggle room to their schedules, but, we are still at the mercy of some nameless/faceless person dictating when we’re supposed to be somewhere and where that place may be. Every Sunday I look at the girl’s game schedule and try to accommodate dinner/social and general house plans around when they have to be somewhere. I then try to coordinate errands and meetings around the times and locations they will be at. Invariably a game gets rescheduled for a different time or location, or cancelled all together, or my absolute favorite the phone call from the child stating that their ride/coach/person has decided to stay for a later game and they won’t be back for hours past when I’ve scheduled all of said errands, meetings etc. I’ve learned to factor that into the equation, so as not to be completed screwed up on my own plans but I have to tell you I spend more time waiting for my kids then I’ve ever waited for anything else – perhaps with the exception of the 2nd coming of Christ.

This last week I was at the oldests' basketball game – it was nearing 5pm and I was trying to factor in dinner with a meeting later on in the evening when my phone rang. It was the younger one telling me they were going to be a little later getting back since the wanted to finish watching another game before the left. I said ok, hung up the phone and then realized that up until that point I had not thought of where my daughter might actually had been – I had forgotten about the game and assumed she was wandering around the campus or sitting with friends watching the game I was at. I quickly took out my calendar and pulled up my email and…there it was, and email from her coach - “Change to Schedule this week” - it had been sent late Sunday night. I suppose no harm no foul, but, it just proves that there’s no use trying to work or fight against the nameless/faceless scheduling system – you just have to roll with it.