I went for a run this morning. During four miles, I experienced sun, rain, warmth, cold, wind, and stillness. I took off and put on my jacket more times than I could count. It was a typical March run.

I found a wonderful website full of poems and quotes about March and spring. This short poem summed up my run perfectly. March is a lion right now; we’ll have to see if the lamb arrives.

“The sun is brilliant in the sky but its warmth does not reach my face.
The breeze stirs the trees but leaves my hair unmoved.
The cooling rain will feed the grass but will not slake my thirst.
It is all inches away but further from me than my dreams.”
–  M. Romeo LaFlamme, The First of March

Compared to your ancestors, you do. Earth’s rotation is slowing down, so a modern day is about 1.7 milliseconds longer than a day a century ago.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when dinosaurs lived, a year was about 370 days long.  Give it another hundred million years, and an Earth year may only be 360 days long.

I’m bringing this up because today is leap day. It might seem like we have a handle on counting time. As long as we add an extra day every four years (but not on century years that aren’t divisible by 400), we’ll never be late.

The truth is, our calendar has to be tweaked often to match the seasons and our trip around the sun. There will never be a time when the calendar is set in stone.

Lucky for humans, this constant change happens so slowly that we can’t tell. But for those who work with super-accurate clocks, leap minutes and leap seconds are as important as leap days.

Well, every February has a day 15, but only in leap years is the 15th the middle of the month, and thus the Ides of February. The funny thing is, though the Ides of the month is the middle day, the 15th of most months is not the true middle. But this year, in February, it is. There are fourteen days before today and fourteen days after. Cool.

February is the month for love. Saturday is a day for having fun. Why not combine the two and do something you love today. Better yet, why not plan to do something you love every day this month. You even get a bonus day because of Leap Day.

“Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” ~ Lucille Ball

I love watching Disney shows, and I signed up for Disney+ because I wanted to see my favorites, but I haven’t watched many this year. I plan to make a list of shows I want to see and watch them throughout February.

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

Do you have something you love to do, something fun that you have neglected because you’re busy? (Aren’t we all.) Why not plan to do it often in February? If you love doing it so much, you could continue doing it in March. And in April. And the rest of 2020.