Somebody Lost Track of Time

I am not a big new year's person. I give Christmas my all and then I'm done! It just isn't a big deal to me. It's not much more than a calendar switch.

I like to carry a little calendar that is about 3x6 inches. I insert into it all kinds of information that I need to keep handy. Some of it I type and tape onto pages I don't need. You know the pages: the ones that list area codes and birthstones and such. Sometimes it is just temporary information and I just put in a sticky note.

Well, on New Year's Day, I set out to get this going with my new calendar and made a rather shocking discovery. This particular calendar is a two-year calendar and actually began with December 2007 and started out straightforward enough.  However, here are the open pages for February.

Turn one page and this is what you find:

 

It goes straight from February 2008 to July 2008!

I knew 2008 went by fast!

Now of course, I don't need these pages and they can actually serve as places to tape in my important info, but the question remains, "How did this come to be in stores?"

The only thing I can figure is that it says it was printed in China and the editors ---if there were any ---did not read English. It certainly never occurred to me that I needed to make sure that a calendar had all the months in it. I thought that came standard. You know, if I can't trust a calendar, my world has been shaken. I sure hope I didn't pay more than a dollar for it!

This started me thinking about the economy. Could the mess we are in have to do with this calendar? What if no one had paid taxes or, for that matter, gotten paid from February to July?  It could certainly account for some of it.

The trouble is, when I continued looking through the little book for 2009, the problem starts up again. It is fine through September, but we only get less than half October: just Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays! November and December are gone all together. Now this is really disheartening because I love fall. I love Thanksgiving and Christmas. That October mess is going to take our son's birthday. I don't think I'm going to like this. The only positive thing I can find is that faculty meetings are held on Thursdays! And I guess I could get used to a two-day work week and a one-day weekend but I'm not sure that my students will be getting enough in-school time. How would that 180 days work anyway?

But how is the economy going to deal with all this lost time? When we were told to "cut back," I had no idea this is what they meant.