Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday...

Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders. Actually, it was the Friday before last.

In this endless summer/nonexistent winter the groundhog will emerge tomorrow to open the windows and turn on the ceiling fans. With its big teeth it will snarl, "Don't make me turn on the air conditioner!"

Time perception is my current preoccupation, following size and number considerations. Been listening to Krys Boyd's "Think" interview with Alan Burdick, author of Why Time Flies. It's a pleasant way to spend time compared to the time I spent waiting for IT to fix my time-saving computer earlier today. Was that really just today?

The past two weeks have been one really long scream preceded by, okay, a couple months of severe numbness and shock. The doctor would ask, "When did you begin experiencing this pervasive sense of doom? Why do you say it is getting worse? " Alas, I only have anecdotes, no contemporaneous records using a standard angst-o-meter.

How long is the interval:

• Between landing and actually exiting the airplane?
• Between paychecks?
• Between haircuts?

Arrange on a continuum by length:

• Webinar from one to two-thirty
• The first snow day off school in a blizzard
• The third consecutive snow day

As a child I loved feeding nickels and dimes into parking meters on the streets of downtown Lincoln. An hour was ten cents if I recall correctly. What a concept! I was buying time with coins. My parents approved this childish diversion, as it didn't involve gumballs or pony rides at Hinky Dinky. It should come as no surprise that You Tube is full of people who collect and refurbish vintage parking meters, possibly even the very parking meters decapitated by Paul Newman at the beginning of "Cool Hand Luke."


But what about "buying time," that present participle of the third-person singular simple present?

• (idiomatic) Purposefully cause a delay to something, in order to achieve something else. We need you to buy us some time, so distract the security guard for a few minutes. SEE Supreme Court nominations.
• Increase the time available for a specific purpose.  Renting an apartment buys them time to look around for a new house in Charlotte. 

Although we no longer appreciate, respect, or need experts, this timely news is in from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who have been tending the Doomsday Clock for seventy years now:

It's 2 1/2 minutes till midnight.

"The board’s decision to move  the 

clock less than a full minute reflects

 a simple  reality: As this statement

 is issued, Donald Trump has been the

US president only a matter of days."

(1/27/2017)

© 2013-2017 Nancy L. Ruder