No Time in the Jungle

This blog title doesn’t mean that we don’t have enough time to do what we want here, although we are plenty busy. What it means is that apparently the gods are conspiring against us, forcing us to slow down and stop watching the clock. Or, in our case, clocks. And watches. And stop watches.

In the past couple of weeks, all but two of our time keeping devices have stopped working. First, my wrist watch faded to nothing and couldn’t be revived with a new battery. Then the stopwatch I use when I Nordic Track, which I thought I could stick in my pocket to replace my wristwatch, decided to stop working. Then the battery powered analog clock we had in the main room stopped. Then the digital clock/thermometer I had on the windowsill in the kitchen faded away. Finally, Tom’s wristwatch started randomly beeping and changing the time displayed, and he was unable to fix that. So, we’re left with the travel alarm next to our bed, and one old wristwatch I found with my stuff, which sort of works, but the lens is scratched, the numbers are small, and the Indiglo doesn’t work, so when I want to use that to see what time it is I have to put on my glasses and stand near a window where the sunlight is coming in. So far the clocks on our computers still work, but they’re only good when the computers are on, which is as seldom as possible.

So, we’re learning to be less clock dependent. We get up in the morning and eat and start our day, and when one of us gets hungry, we find a clock and see if it’s anywhere close to lunchtime. Sometimes we’re dead on and it’s time for lunch, and sometimes we’re not. If it’s still too early, we have a snack, and if it’s too late for lunch, we plan an early dinner. When Tom and Selwyn get tired of whatever they’re working on, they check the clock and determine if it’s quitting time or just time to start another job. When we get tired at night, we generally go to bed, even if the clock tells us it’s early. We’ll probably at least replace our wristwatches before too long, but in the meantime, we’re sort of enjoying living life off the clock.