Does anybody really know what month it is? (02/26/07)

Am I the only one who thinks the calendar has gone crazy lately?

I am being inundated with seed catalogs. That tells me that it must be early January. My crocus that I forced into bloom is finally showing signs of life. That means that it has to be March or maybe April since the ones I force never, ever bloom before the ones outside. We had our first big snow of the year a couple of weeks ago. Should it still be November?

The calendar says it is the end of February. In years past February was cold and dreary. The snow that had hung around since late December would be a decidedly ugly shade of brown tinged with dark gray. Shopping for the February birthdays was a hazardous affair. Not this year. This year the roads are mostly clear and the snow that is melting in odd patterns has only been on the ground for a few weeks. I'm glad.

Weather used to be so predictable. January was cold, depressing and filled with snow that didn't fully melt for weeks. February was best endured. Things started looking up in March. Warm days filled with spring violets would be interspersed with icy rain and late snows. April was wet and occasionally warm. May was when school let out and the shoes came off. June, July and August were hot but not unbearable even though we didn't have air conditioning. School started and things cooled down in September. The first snow came in October then disappeared until November or December. Then the whole cycle began again.

The space program was just beginning when I was a kid and there was much talk that the rockets and spaceships were to blame for every unseasonable weather occurrence there was. When the space junk began falling from the sky we worried that it would hit us on the head. It never did. Now space exploration, such as it is, has become so much background noise and we blame global warming for unusual and often destructive weather patterns.

My theory is that the weather just is. It is what it is and although humans most certainly affect the weather through our destructive practices, there will always be hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and whatever. It is just part of life on this planet. Since the weather itself is mostly out of our control, it must be the calendar that is wrong.

Instead of having leap year every four years why not have a leap month every couple of years? Everybody born in an even year would work the first to the fifteenth of the leap month and those born in odd years would work the fifteenth through the thirtieth. That way everyone gets a two-week vacation to catch up on all those little things we don't have time for in the course of our usual routines. Travel would be frowned upon. And all television stations would go off the air for the entire month. The goal would be to relax and enjoy life. Maybe then we wouldn't all be so stressed all the time.

Leap month should rotate through the calendar year. A January or February leap month could be used for making big pots of soup and lots of homemade bread or maybe just for hibernating. A March or April leap month could be spent enjoying whatever sunny days there are. A summer leap month is great for lazing around the yard and think what you could do with an extra month between Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Maybe having a leap month every so often would get the calendar back on track so that the seasons once again agreed with the dates on the calendar. After all, calendars are purely arbitrary. Sure they are supposed to be based on the time it takes the earth to go around the sun but why should August be longer than February? Why are there twelve months in the year? Why not ten or five or seventeen?

Maybe one day someone will realize that having a leap month is a good idea and we can eliminate February completely. Then again, maybe not.[[In-content Ad]]