Here is how you get more hours in your day. You wake up and roll over and look at your digital alarm clock. It says, 1:23. YIKES! Hop out of bed and get movin'!

You brush your teeth and go downstairs and, you know, check your email. Then you decide to visit the powder room and on the way there you glance at your husband's clock in his little office, it's hard to miss, right in the line of vision. It says the wrong time, something like 11:45. Sheesh, that clock always needs winding up. Then you putter around and decide to eat something and notice the clock on the microwave reads 12:15. Wow, what is wrong with this day, it's all mixed up.

Then the big AHA! moment. Yeah, I got up at 11:23. There you have it, two whole extra hours in your day, no sweat. One of these days I will have to learn to read the WHOLE digital clock. This has happened to me before . . . read on.

Years ago I was cleaning a house, it was my first cleaning job ever and I was very nervous -- because I didn't know if I could work fast enough to get all the chores done that were assigned. So, I cleaned as fast as I knew how. After some time had gone by, I checked a clock. I think I was down on the floor dusting baseboards (ugh) looking up at the time, yes, it was again a digital clock. YIKES!!! HELP!!! It was 1:30 and I had only cleaned the upstairs and still had the downstairs to do and only 1.5 hours left to do it. Not a good feeling. Well, by the time I got downstairs, I saw another clock, in the kitchen again, and discovered it was only 11:3o. WHEW!

What this tells us is that I am rotten with time. You'd think when I woke up this morning I could have told approximately what time it was by the sun, at least something should have seemed off. And wow, I just have no concept of time, period, in the housework story. Maybe 2.5 hours of work seemed like 4.5 hours, yes, that might be it.

I am also rotten with a sense of direction. My skill set does not include north, south, east or west, nor a sense of time. So this is why I have no time management abilities, I'm in every direction at once and have no idea what time (or maybe even day) it is.

Last night Bed, Bath and Beyond took my $4.28 back. The young guy and girl at the service desk looked a little kerfoodled (word?) that I would come back with a mistake in their favor. Well, I am all for free enterprise and I like to see people succeed, don't you?

Okay, I'm keeping to my midnight curfew if it kills me, which, since I have no inkling of time, it just might.

It IS 11:29 right a now.

KEM