Leap Year

Happy Leap Year!!!

Today is probably the weirdest day of the year, the day when everything gets flipped on it’s head.  Girls run around proposing to boyfriends, people that are 28 really go round celebrating their 7^th birthdays, everyone else has to wait an extra DAY for their birthday... it’s a random one, and there are things I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS DAY.

First up, the whole marriage proposal thing.  Without going into too much detail (because I don’t want to spoil the surprise for someone close to me) in certain circumstances it is fine and more than understandable (the person this is aimed at will know I am referring to them) but 9 times out of 10 I just don’t understand it.  As a woman we have to put up with periods, childbirth, menopause, all while men just sit on their asses scratching their nuts but still manage to get better looking with age.  The least we can ask for is a bit of effort, a bit of thought going into a marriage proposal surely?  I personally have thought about what I would want my proposal to be like (I currently have my heart set on some sort of PDA, aka a FLASH MOB – something like THIS is bloody brilliant) and none of my ideas of my Perfect Marriage Proposal (PMP) involve me asking the boy.  I mean, I break out in a cold sweat just having to order my lunch in a cafe in front of people if I don’t know what I want (TOO MUCH CHOICE IS A BAD THING), so ME asking SOMEONE ELSE to MARRY ME is enough to give me a hernia.  My PMP would have to be on a completely random day – I wouldn’t want it to tie in with anything such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, birthdays etc as it’s just so unoriginal.  I wouldn’t want it to be up the Eiffel Tower, or on a gondola in Venice – it’s just too clichéd!  For me to say yes, it would have to be personal to me, to us, and it would have to be the sort of situation where I think to myself “I am saying yes to marrying you because this proposal is everything I ever wanted and YOU KNOW THAT, therefore you know me”.  This post is running the risk of turning massively bent, and I don’t want it to be about that at all (but at least if any of you decide you want to propose to me, which frankly I wouldn’t blame you, you now know how to do it).  I just think for me personally, proposing to my boyfriend would be rubbish.  If he wanted to marry you he’d ask YOU right?  RIGHT?

Anyway, enough of all that LOVE stuff *vomit*, next up is the birthdays.  If you are born on the 29^th Feb what do you DO every other year?  I mean I know you probably celebrate your birthday either the day before or the day after... but how do you decide which day?  Clearly if you are celebrating your 28^th birthday today you aren’t REALLY 7, as you would have lived for 28 years (so everyone can stop cracking those stupid jokes because they are just boring) but why do this at all?  I don’t understand why every 4 years, there is an extra day?  Who does it benefit?  I bet it’s something to do with farmers, as everything annoying is something to do with farmers (when the clocks go back/forward, that really disgusting smell in the countryside, the fact you can BUY horse shit if you want to).  I’m actually going to google it now, hold on...

*wait*

*STOP BEING IMPATIENT*

Right, here are some leap year facts and a genuine explanation from timeanddate.com .  IGNORE THAT BIT, because it was about as easy to understand as Stephen Hawkings learning French.  I found a nice chap on Yahoo Answers that probably gave the most straight forward answer I have ever seen in my life.  He said “There is a leap year every 4 years because every normal year it takes 365 and ¼ days for the Earth to go round the Sun.  So every 4 years we need to add a day to keep the calendar consistent with the Seasons”.  Just like that!  What an intelligent little bean he is.  According to the bewildering timeanddate.com, “If we did not do this we would lose almost 6 hours off our calendar every year, and after 100 years our calendar would be off by approx 24 days”.  Erm, so?  I understand what they are saying, I just don’t understand why it would matter?  Does that mean that if we did this everything would be a mess and we’d be getting up for work at 1.57am and coming home at 2.46pm and eating dinner at midnight and everything would just be weird?  WEIRDER THAN IT IS EVERY 4 YEARS ON FEB 29^TH  ANYWAY?  Or does it mean that after 100 years when we would normally change from Spring to Summer, and Summer to Autumn etc, we would be 24 days out, so if we left it long enough our Summer would end up being October, November, December etc?  I understand that too, but I don’t get why it matters as it’s just a name.  Calling it Summer doesn’t automatically make the weather sunny?  If that was to happen then just change the words so Winter meant it was sunny and everyone was happy and you could wear flip flops to work and Summer meant it was going to be depressing and cold and everyone is skint.  I don’t even know why I am thinking about it this much, it has never bothered me before but now this is bothering me.  This is what happens when I google something.  I need to calm down.

Ok, I am calm.  Confused but calm.  Next question – why has the day been added on to the end of February?  No one likes February, it’s boring and the only thing that happens in it is Valentines Day which is just rubbish too.  Why can’t it have been added onto the end of July, so there is an extra day of Summer, or added onto the end of August so all the kids get an extra day in their summer holidays?  It's in February so now everyone that is still skint from Christmas has another extra day to be skint on, another day further away from payday.  My brain is so fried that I can’t be bothered to try and google that so if anyone has any answers, then let me know.  Do it in a really un-patronising way though please as it’s still early.

HAPPY LEAP DAY!  If anyone is doing any proposing or has been proposed to today, let me know – I love a good story about romance and I promise I won’t tell you it’s stupid! xx

 P.S Why is it when you google “leap year” there are lots of pictures of frogs?  What has a frog got to do with leap year, am I missing something there too?

*UPDATE* Yes I just got the frog thing, LEAP year.  Frogs leap.