“From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.”
This morning it sprinkled a bit, and though it has stopped, the clouds remain. Today is chilly and dreary. When I look out my windows, I see more and more dead leaves hanging from the oak trees. A small tree with some red leaves is all I have left of the colors of fall. Hunker down time is nearer and nearer.
Night has begun encroaching. With the change in time, with the end of daylight saving, it will come earlier. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand the whole idea, but I didn’t like it. My afternoon play time was less because the street lights came on earlier. I thought that was a cheat somehow, a parental ploy to get us to bed earlier.
We always had November 1st off from school because it was a holy day of obligation. That was one of the perks of attending a Catholic school. We had to go to mass then the whole day was ours. Today is the holy day and a Sunday. You get to knock off two obligations at the same time.
Clean underwear was always a big thing with mothers. I never understood why because even without the possibility of an accident and eternal embarrassment to my mother I always wore clean underwear. I mean really who’d want to wear dirty underwear? My mother would have been better served warning me to wear underwear without holes. I had a theory that socks with holes and underwear with holes were fine because nobody saw them excluding any accidents of course. I still adhere to that theory but mostly with wearing socks with holes. I turn over the top of the socks so my toes won’t poke through. A few times I tried to darn the socks but instead I got these huge lumps which hurt with shoes on. I went back to folding. When I went to Ghana, I bought enough new underwear for every day so I wouldn’t have to wash any. I have so much now I throw away the ones with holes or loose elastics. My mother would be so proud.
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November 1, 2015 at 12:53 pm
Besides the change going back to standard time we also returned home from our vacation to Las Vegas last night. My circadian clock is all messed up today. I hadn’t been there in 35 years and if I didn’t return in the next 35 years it would be too soon. Everything there is huge and over the top as well as expensive. This was my spouse’s and daughter’s first trip there so we stayed at Caesar’s Palace hotel to get the full Las Vegas luxury experience. We saw a couple of shows, went to a couple of the huge buffets and lost a very few dollars to the electronic one armed bandits. Smoke free is a dirty word in Las Vegas. All the casinos and hotel lobbies reek of cigarette smoke,
I think both our mother’s must have attended the same school of motherhood. Only she could deduce that emergency medical personnel would care about the condition of my underwear while saving my life after an accident. Clean underwear has become more important with age. When I was younger clean equated to how badly my underwear smelled. Ugh, it’s a good thing that youth is left to the young. 🙂
November 1, 2015 at 1:57 pm
Bob,
You and I agree about Las Vegas. I have no urge to go there. You did it up right by staying at Caesar’s and seeing shows. If you’re going, you might as well go big.
I was always into clean underwear. Maybe it was a girl thing. After a South American trip lasting over 2 months, I vowed never to wash underwear again. I had to in Ghana but haven’t since except in a machine. My hands will never wash underwear again.
November 1, 2015 at 3:45 pm
Guess what? If you live long enough you won’t have to wash underwear, you will just throw your depends in the trash when they become soiled. 🙂
November 1, 2015 at 4:34 pm
Bob,
You can buy disposable underwear now but it is expensive.
November 1, 2015 at 1:09 pm
Much the same weather here today as we had yesterday but perhaps a bit more windy, we’ll get some sunshine tomorrow but the rest of the week will stay cloudy and fairly war, around 50F both day and night.
We didn’t get daylight savingstime until rather late here (well they had it in the early 19 hundreds but they realised it just was a waste of time really 🙂 We have daylight almost all hours of the day during summer 🙂 Too bad the politicians don’t understand that today!) I disliked it already the first time it happened and can’t say I like it better now. I wouldn’t mind if we had British time all year round though, that woulkd make the afternoons a bit brighter.
They changed it so that this holiday, all saints night always would come on the last Saturday in October, I feel that they have robbed me of a paid day at home 🙂
Yes clean underwear is the mothers universal law I think 🙂 I think they also included free from holes but I’m not sure 🙂 I used to fix holes in socks back in the days and got quite good at it but now days I just toss them away and buy new ones when I remember it. I should have remembered it long ago so now I have too few left 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
November 1, 2015 at 1:15 pm
The original intent of daylight savings was to give people the extra hour of daylight in the summer to enjoy outdoor activities after work. Now it’s a means of saving energy. People use more electric power in the evenings than in the mornings, therefore having an extra hour of daylight during peak energy usage hours saves energy overall.
November 1, 2015 at 1:17 pm
Hi Bob!
Not much use here since the sun goes up around 4am and goes down around 11pm here during summer 🙂 🙂 🙂
November 1, 2015 at 2:15 pm
Christer,
It is going to be warm here the rest of the week, including the mid-60’s. I don’t know about rain, but I hope it will be sunny.
They had it during WWI then eliminated it then started it again during World War II. The intent then was to save fuel for the war effort. Lately there have been some grumblings about it.
All Saint’s Day is always November 1st. Halloween is always October 31. All Soul’s Day is November 2nd, but we still had to go to school then.
I agree that clean underwear is a universal mother’s thing. Holes, not so much!
Have a great Sunday!
November 1, 2015 at 2:45 pm
Hi Kat,
For some reason I always assumed my mother meant underwear without holes when she said to wear clean ones. I figured it wouldn’t matter anyway because if I was in an accident that serious, my underwear would probably already be dirty and the hospital staff would be cutting them off me.
I wore clean ones anyway because…ew. They might have had small holes at the elastic waistband where I always managed to poke one or more fingers through the seam that joins it to the body of the panty. Delicate lingerie and I were never a good match. 😀
Didn’t you feel a bit cheated when a holy day of obligation fell on a Sunday? Yeah, you get to knock off two obligations with one mass but you also don’t get that day off from school. 🙂
Today is dreary. There were some promises of possible sunlight but they came to naught. It’s comfortable outside. Just dark.
Enjoy the day.
November 1, 2015 at 4:29 pm
Caryn,
Holes never entered my head. I always asked her if underwear was all she cared about if I was ever in an accident. I figured she’d ask, “Was her underwear clean?” before she’d ask, “How is my daughter?”
I never gave the missing day off any thought. I was just glad I didn’t have to go to mass twice in a week.
Dreary is the perfect description of today. Now it is nearly dark to add to the misery.
Have a great evening!
November 1, 2015 at 2:56 pm
Wet windy weekend here in the NW.A true fall weekend it tis.:-)
November 1, 2015 at 4:30 pm
Mortify,
It is fall weather indeed. Looks like your weather mirrors mine!
November 1, 2015 at 5:14 pm
Havin’ the Good Doctor in the lead-off position doin’ that li’l washday song reminds me of the story my grandmother told me about the incident a friend of hers had with her wringer washer – remember those, esp. the non-electric ones?
Seems her friend had removed some of the items from the washer and was putting them thru the wringer (there’s a phrase in them thar origins) when – gasp! – one of her ‘ladyberries’ slipped from its protective covering and flopped between the wringers. As my grandmother told it, removing her ‘precious’ from the wringer eventually involved bringing in the police and fire departments. Imagine the stories that went around the stationhouses for years afterward …
Light rain during the night, none to speak of today – but it’s quite grey and overcast in a London-ish sort of way, which is nice.
I was so thrilled to be rid of that damned Daylight Saving Time (not ‘Savings’) I adjusted all my clocks yesterday in anticipation. ‘Daylight Saving Time’ comes to us all the way from 1905, courtesy of one William Willett. It took WWI to put it into effect.
Germany adopted DST in 1916 to replace artificial lighting so as to save fuel for the war effort. Britain followed Germany’s lead, as did the US, and after the war, DST was abandoned. Until WWII. That’s when the term ‘War Time’ was incorporated into our vocabulary. After Japan’s surrender in ’45, we returned to what was called (wait for it) … ‘Peace Time.’ Ta-daaaaaa!
Two other terms we use now without a second thought were first used as referents to DST: ‘Summer Time’ (a/k/a ‘Sommerzeit’) and ‘Winter Time’ – or, ‘Time Without DST.’ See how much fun language can be … ?
It’s a lot funner than checkin’ underwear for holes, tho’ … whenever Mom gave us the handkerchief that had 7¢ in each of the knots tied in opposite corners (for bus fare), she’d ask us if we had on clean underwear. We gradually just got to the point where we said ‘Yeah’ … that wasn’t important to us.
If I were still in New Orleans, I’d drive across the lake to a cemetery on the North Shore that has a sundown ceremony of lighting candles at every grave in the yard. They don’t do stuff like that in Memphis – or prolly anywhere in TN. Livin’ in that ‘Buckle O’ The Bible Belt’ really ain’t ‘all that and a bag o’ chips.’ Today’s also the day y’ find the ‘voudou’ remnants left by the Young Goths who take their dates to the cemeteries to play suckface and use their dearth of knowledge about ‘voudou’ to ‘impress’ them with their ‘mad skillz.’ Too bad, ‘cuz a lot of really nice fruit and produce gets wasted while they’re doin’ their ‘shuck ‘n jive’ con jobs with the gullible young ‘maidens fair’ … but, they wouldn’t know how to prepare any of it for a meal anyway …
Now we can sit back and enjoy ‘Winter Time’ again …
November 1, 2015 at 9:37 pm
Richard,
My imagination went haywire picturing the woman and her wringer. I got the heebie jeebies. I would not have wanted to be the subject of the have you heard this one at the fire and police stations.
It is after 9, and it is still damp but warm, 59˚. I can see the stars so the clouds have cleared.
I knew it was saving time, not savings.
I thought I had adjusted everything but I had forgotten the thermostat. I had the worse time trying to change it and ended up with a reset and reprogramming all of it.
I knew why DST was started, but I didn’t know the source of the terms war time and peace time.
I think boys were far less inclined to wear clean underwear. My brother used to turn his inside out so he’d get more than a day from a single pair. I thought it was gross.
Even when I was an adult, I’d wear underwear where the elastic had separated from the garment. That used to drive my mother crazy. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t buy new underwear. I told her nobody saw it so why spend money on it. Every Christmas she’d give me new underwear as a gift.
I think traditions in New Orleans are probably unique. It has such an amazing history. Here on the Cape we had the Puritans who saw fit to outlaw Christmas and any festivities which might have a bit of fun attached. Since then Cape folks have been hearty.
We have a few ghosts but that’s about it.
I’m not ready to enjoy winter time quite yet!