TIME'S RUNNING OUT

1. Ever found yourself pushed to get something done, only to find it’s too late? Welcome to the club. It makes it look like you’re putting it off, when it happens to be at the bottom of your to-do list.

2. Like me, tucking the Mazda Miata away for the winter. Last May I updated the 20-year-old sports car’s insurance prepping it for the road – left covered beside the house – and now I had only to keep fire and theft on it.

3. It was the middle of last May before I got it off the blocks. I’d plugged a trickle charger in for the winter and surprise, surprise, the Miata fired up as if it was eager to get back on the road.

4. Now, the first week of November, and I could cross the prepping it for winter off my list.

5. We live on a small chunk of land packed with trees. A mini forest. Lots of oaks and maples which means lots of leaves when they begin to fall creating a thick carpet of them everywhere.

6. The trick is to rake them off the deck and the stoop by the solarium. Otherwise, if rain is followed by snow falling on top of the leaves, it makes one hell of a slippery mess. Especially on the gravel walk to where we park the cars. As it is, a heavy snowstorm stops us from driving the 4-wheeler up the hill.

7. Back to raking leaves. It's not one of my favorite pastimes. Two weeks ago I drove by a neighbor raking her front yard. She was using the biggest rake I’ve ever seen, A good 76.2 cms (30 inches) across. Meaning half a dozen sweeps and I’d have almost raked up the whole darn yard.

8. I went in search of such a rake and found one. I’ll sweep the deck first, then the parking area. And cross another job off my list.

9. Author’s comment: Funnily enough, a message popped up when opening my laptop this morning. It was from Microsoft suggesting what I should do right now, 'so I could cross it off my list'. Hmm.