the chicken little of the calendar

I recommend you to take care of the minutes: for hours will take care of themselves. -- Earl of Chesterfield

The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. -- C.S. Lewis

The sky isn't falling. I just checked: it's secure, if a bit overcast.

The passage of time, though: that's another thing entirely. (Though also tending toward the overcast...)

I remember charging through the house as a kid, on the 30th or 31st, telling everyone "It's time to change the calendars! Flip your calendars tonight! New month tomorrow!"

Then I'd change my own, and run my fingers over all the blank boxes that we had yet to cross. It felt like looking at a map, only with far less information... something to cross through that you cannot see.

I've never been completely easy with them, those blank boxes.

I can let a few go past without too much concern, but every fifth day or so, I panic again at what day it is. "Can you believe it's the fifteenth?!" I was shrieking yesterday. "The fifteenth! It's the middle of May!! And 2009, no less! How did it get to be 2009? Wasn't it just 2005?"

No one else looked surprised.

One of my magazines arrived early this week--the June edition. June? I had to sit down and take a few deep breaths.

One day at a time? What on earth does that mean??

Time seems to pull me along kicking and screaming, the kid pressing herself back in her chair, as if she's at some horror movie but can't take her eyes off the screen... Eeeek, another day gone!

It comes out in other ways, too: at my job once, I got the date wrong on something. Month and day were fine, but I was two years off. And it was September. Should've been used to the year by then, eh? (I got a few weird looks.)

Despite this panicking, the sky is falling!! relationship with time, I still make plans, still move forward, somehow.

Which brings us to Monday: time to start drafting again, the third section out of four. Another major rewrite, new scenes, new dialogue. My protagonist should drop by--we can only hope--and the antagonist is sharpening her cruelty. They'll all be there on Monday, and so will I, though I'll be the one blinking astonishment at my computer screen.

The eighteenth? Really?? Can it possibly be the 18th? That's late May, isn't it? I mean, it's practically the twentieth, and once you hit the twenties, you're practically done with the month, so we might as well call it June, and then it's summer, and then--