Snow was flurrying past my window this morning as I yawned and stretched my way into the kitchen to make breakfast for my friends.  I could have left my clock up.

The minute Thanksgiving is over I replace my usual kitchen wall clock with this quirky little snowman number.  I leave it up until March 1.  Usually.

The beauty of this clock is that it plays a different Christmas carol at the top of each hour.  Sixteen or so happy, joyful little infusions into my day.  I say sixteen or so because the clock has a light sensor, preventing happy, joyful intrusions into my sleep.  When the kitchen is dark, the clock is quiet.

Most years I have which carol plays when memorized by mid-December.  The little tune plays and I know exactly what time it is.  This year my brain was a bit too feeble or something to memorize the order of songs.  But at least I knew generally what time it was.  Late afternoon, O Come All Ye’ Faithful?  Oops, better put down the project and get dressed, the hub will be home soon…

March 1 was the compromise I struck with my family.  Whenever they would question the whatever of having a Christmas clock on the kitchen wall in February, I would quote the diner scene from The Rookie:

“Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” is heard in the background.
Jimmy: “Frank, isn’t it a little late to be playing this song?”
Frank:  “It’s 8:30.”
Jimmy:  “It’s March.”
[Here’s the part I would quote:]
Frank:  “That song’s too good to play for just one month…”  “Mel Torme wrote The Christmas Song in June, on a beach somewhere.  There wasn’t no Jack Frost nipping at anyone’s nose that day.”

The hub and I quote movie scenes to one another.

PLUS, I would point out, it isn’t a Christmas clock, it’s a snowman clock.  As long as there is snow flying, the clock is perfectly fine.

It snows well past March 1 here, but I’m not unreasonable.  So the deal was struck:  The clock stays until March 1.  But this year, no one said anything. So I let it ride.

I let it ride all the way until the snow started to melt and it looked like Spring might actually come after all.  So on March 25, 2015 I took the clock down all on my own without a word from anyone.

And I kinda’ miss it.

And then this morning, as I stretched and yawned my way into the kitchen to make breakfast for my friends, SNOW was flurrying past my window.

It’s the little things.