Take time as it comes

Dear Miss Kitty,
Someone I am dating is going to an event. She didn’t invite me to come along, but I thought I might go anyway and surprise her. Is it alright to attend an event if you were not invited?

Kevin, SANTA BARBARA
Dear Kevin,
1%, 2% and even non-fat are all considered “milk”, just in case the word “stalking” escapes you.


Dear Miss Kitty,
My husband I have divorced after 20 years of marriage and the kids are out of the nest. Between the two, I find that I cannot get a good feel for time. Not only is there no dinner time, there are no semesters and family vacations. Now that's all gone I find it hard to know where my time is going. Without family activated I feel confused. Is this an aging thing or am I the only one with a time problem?
L.S, MONTECITO

Dear L,
To help us find our place in the world we set imaginary stones in illusory cement in order to find our way. We call it a routine and rituals. When these time markers or rituals are no longer applicable it is often difficult to know where time has gone or how to use it. Without benchmarks, both big and small we can suddenly feel that the world is just too big for us. Like Hansel and Gretel, without any bread crumbs, we feel lost.

During the initial shock of losing a loved one or a relationship, part of the pain is realizing that the markers we have always known and counted on are gone for good. Each week blurs into the next until we realize that the clocks need to go back, or is it forward? Does this mean that we have lost our inner sense of time? Was time as we know it, ever a friend? If time can change, not just actually but conceptually, how can we ever understand it?

Think about what time means to a living organism, and one can see that although time appears to be a human invention, time’s roots clearly belong to Mother Nature. All of our bodily functions are organized by time: Some in hours, some in months, and some in years. The DNA secretary has it all securely filed away and password protected.

Unfortunately the DNA secretary doesn’t work for emotionally driven time frames. The files are just too big and too confusing for anyone to master. Do you remember your first love when time seemed to stand still? Talking for hours and feeling like it was minute? It felt like you had known each other for an eternity and yet it was only weeks. The heady intoxication of love felt like it would last forever and forever. Then bamm! The years flash by just like the Road Runner with Wiley E. Coyote hot on his tail. Where was time standing then? On hot coals of molten lava?
Emotional time frames are not of the same substance as clocked minutes and seconds. Call me Mr. Wizard, but they are somehow loosely connected in a universal time-space. You don't have to channel Einstein to imagine this. When someone asks where your emotional heart is; that is where it exists, in some time and some space. That’s why we feel so lost when we lose the important breadcrumbs.

Darling L, Boys and Girls, take time as it comes in whatever shape it has. Trying to understand how it relates to your own life is an impossible task. Time is an every changing aspect dependent on what we are doing. However, if life’s rituals are grounding and a safety net of sorts, new markers can be made. Remember that breakfast for dinner makes kids really happy, and it isn’t because of the pancakes.
Have a naughty day!