Clocks, Time & Time Changes

Normal Time has arrived and with it some struggles, thoughts and rest. Normal time is when we fall back an hour from Daylight Savings Time. I don't understand any of it. I'm supposed to feel better but I'm always lazy and tired when the change is made. No difference this year. Its been a few weeks but my body clock is out of step, messed up and confused like many of you I would guess. Supposedly I got an extra hour of sleep but then again, I stayed up later. Help!

All of this brings me to clocks and specifically, the clocks in my house. I grew up in a clock family. My father was infatuated with clocks. He collected them and had them ticking throughout his house. I'm not sure if this was a shared love between him and my mother or if she just put up with it. Perhaps he just put up with it but after her death became more attached to the things she loved. Whatever the case, they had every kind of clock and they have been distributed among his sons and daughters. There were mantel clocks, cuckoo clocks, grandfather clocks, 7 day, 30 day and school house clocks. They would tick, tick, tock, tock all over the place. A few would chime on the hour and others on the half or quarter hour. It was always a surprise, depending on where you were in the house, what you would hear and when you would hear it. Some of them would chime together, others would go off on their own schedule within a minute or two of the first. I believe his goal was to one day get them all coordinated but he never did.

I remember visiting him one day in his later years. He had one of the clocks in a hundred or more pieces laid out on the kitchen table. A lamp was set up with the cord stretching dangerously across a walk space. He had gotten himself a set of small pliers and screw drivers and was working away on this latest project. He got things working to his satisfaction (chimes within five minutes of the other clocks). He also spent lots of time (no pun intended) cleaning, dusting and polishing his collection. To be honest, I enjoyed watching him and the homeyness I felt when all of those clocks started their chant.

All of that brings me to my clocks. Oh, of course I have the digital clocks that keep us all on schedule - the mobile phone, the appliance clocks and so forth. All of these are set on nuclear time or something of that sort. In my front room I have a Seth Thomas mantel clock. A modern, battery operated quarter hour chimer. I changed batteries about a month ago and something strange happened. The pendulum works but the hands don't move. It has been stuck on 5 after 8. In the hallway, I have a nice mission oak wall clock. It's supposed to chime on the hour and 1/2 hour. No luck, it sits stuck on either noon or midnight. In my living room I have one of the clocks my father left me, a nice school room wall clock. I've had it repaired at least three times and right now the hands are stuck on 8:55.

So please, if you ever come to visit, wear a watch or bring your cell phone. Time here is pretty relative - 5 after 8, noon or midnight, or 8:55.

Update - the battery clock hands have started moving again but it's losing an hour for every 12. Chimes are nice but have nothing to do with the actual time.