Time Warp

I am sure that I have mentioned before that I am a creature of habit, and my Saturday morning habit is one I have kept for a very long time:  I get up and run errands, especially going to the grocery store, gassing up the car, and frequently, going to the library before I run all other errands.  The last few weekends, I have not kept that schedule, and have done fun things, or just read, which is a really fun thing, before running errands.

This Saturday, I tried to get back into my habit: I did not need to go to the library, but I did get gasoline and run errands.  My intent was to get home, unload the groceries, and go for a haircut.

Well, I tried very hard to keep Haiku out of the garage as I was unloading the groceries, because she gets up on the top shelves, and getting her down is a precarious business. I have done it a couple of times, but the precariousness of it makes me be very careful about when I scrabble her down. She gets herself down quite nicely, thank you when she is ready. But, she raced into the garage, anyway.  I went after her, and she could sense that I was upset, so where did she end up? On the top shelf.  I know she knew I was upset.  I went back into the garage, and sweet talked her, and I could tell she settled down.  But still, I way over reacted about not getting to go for a haircut when I wanted to go.

Haiku stayed on the top shelf for several hours, and came down just within the window for me to go to  get a haircut. Because I use the local Pro-Cuts, and can wait for more that 30 minutes to be waited upon, I figure more than an hour for a haircut.  I was debating if I wanted to go or not, because I wanted to be home for the start of the Yankee vs. Red Sox game.  Well, a dear friend called, and that made my decision for me. We talked for quite some time. We had not talked in a couple of weeks, and I was so glad to hear her voice and connect with her. By the time we finished our conversation, I decided I could not get a hair cut and be back in time for the start of the Yankee vs. Red Sox game.  No big deal.

So, I watched the Yankee vs. Red Sox in the afternoon and early evening.  After the game, I started reading, waiting for the temperature to drop to make sitting in the yard comfortable.  All of a sudden, I had to realize that it was no longer light outside.   As the evening went on, I had the sense that it should still be light out, but of course, the evening was progressing.  Even after midnight, I had the sense it should still be light out, and it was not, of course. 

This kind of time warp happens to me when I am reading a book that absorbs me, and I have no sense of time.  It was well after midnight, when I went to bed, but it did not feel that late.  I was reading a Deborah McCrobmie mystery: In A Dark House,  which kept me absorbed until late.  So, it felt like it was much earlier in the evening than it was, when I finished that book.

After I finished that book, I started the next book: Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America.  This is a very serious book about the civil rights movements in America, even before it was popular, in the 1940s and later on.   I did finally get tired enough to go to sleep.

But even with changing to that book, I never felt like it was late enough to go to bed.  Hmmm.

When I experience a time warp like that, I am very uncomfortable.  It is almost as if I have an "out of body" experience. But of course, that was not what happened.  It was just a discordant reality feeling.