Special Edition Sunday Post

I don’t think I’ve written a NEW Sunday post since 2006, but a few events this Sunday make me just want to write from the top of the highest mountain. Ok, that may have been a little over the top, sorry. At any rate, this is the most special of Sundays. Why am I all a-twitter, you wonder? Well, it’s one of my 2 favorite ‘clock’ times of the year. Maybe I should have said ‘clock’ days instead of ‘clock’ times. It is time to Spring forward, which means more sun and longer days, but more about that later. The other reason that today is a great Sunday (and I owe Selma greatly for notifying me of this) is that it is Cheese Sunday in Macedonia. Yep, an actual cheese day. Yes, a day about cheese. Let me state it again to get the full effect here. Cheese Sunday. Sunday/cheese.

And if that all isn’t enough, I JUST found out while writing this that my niece ‘KFC’ was born moments ago at a healthy 5 pounds 9 ounces. Welcome to the world little Colonel. I can’t wait to meet you! Although something tells me that years from now I’ll be referred to as the ‘weird’ Uncle…

Ok, back to the writing. I realize that the natural tendency is to get a little cranky about Springing Forward because we all lose an hour of sleep. But really, that’s just one hour on one night. What we gain is much more important, though if you want to wait a day or so to accept that fact, I can forgive you. We gain sunlight later into the night. I know this was started for farmers to get more time in the fields and for vampire deterrence and all, but I personally have my own ways to utilize more daylight each day.

Daylight Savings time means I can now get home from the office and not trip over a toy in the front walkway and actually be able to see the newest gopher hole in the yard without having to wait until morning. It means I can take evening walks with Lucy and Ethel as they ask me life’s most pointed questions (like why is some gravy brown and other gravy white, to which I answer: ‘does it matter? If they all taste this good; they can make my gravy purple because it’s not the color of the gravy that matters, it’s how good it tastes’) and then challenge my answers as if they were on a debate team. It means that it will eventually get warmer so that I don’t have to take 45 minutes to blow dry their hair (that’s 45 minutes PER HEAD, mind you) after bath time (and for the record, I am convinced beyond any doubt that there is no such thing as too strong of a hair dryer).

It means I can enjoy BBQ’ing later into the evening without having to get beyond dangerously close to examine the doneness of the meat (by the way, can contacts melt to your eye balls, because I’m really starting to worry). It also means being able to immediately find the basketball now after Lucy and Ethel don’t catch it and it rolls down the driveway and down our disturbingly steep street while shooting hoops in the driveway after dinner instead of having to stop the truck and pick the ball up when I’m driving down the street and spot it on the way to work the next morning. Lastly, I think the longer day now means that you could start reading a sentence like the one I just wrote about basketball at 5PM and actually have it finished before the sun goes down. Seriously, would a period in there somewhere have killed me? So get out the basketball hoop, check the quality of the dog’s leash, load up on the charcoal and Spring those clocks forward! Summertime can’t be too far away now.

Then there is the whole Macedonia Cheese Sunday thing. Uh, sign me up to be a Macedonian or Macedone or Macedoniaite or whatever they like to me called, because Cheese Sunday is definitely for me. Apparently in the Republic of Macedonia, the last 2 Sundays leading up to Lent are special. First comes Meat Sunday, then comes Cheese Sunday and then comes a baby in a baby carriage. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Other than the Daytona 500 Sunday and the Indy 500 Sunday, can you name a better pair of Sundays? Two Sundays in a row devoted to meat and cheese. I mean I’m a patriotic American and have pride in the good ole U.S. of A, but really, all we can boast about is having Superbowl Sunday. Sure, we can eat meats and cheeses on that day, but we don’t devote the day to meat or to cheese. I gotta be honest and tell you that the Republic of Macedonia is looking pretty good. Yeah they may only have a population of 2 million and probably don’t auto race or park their cars on cinder blocks in the front yard or have 5 different Rachael Ray shows, but they are a special group of people despite all of that.

For today, I am going to relish being a new Uncle who can stay outside later studying by sunlight to take my Republic of Macedonia citizenship test. Cheese Sunday, don’t it smell great? Or when it’s cheese, would it be better to say grate?