For the first time in my life, I am strangely excited about Leap Day this week.  So excited in fact, that I am posting to my poor, ignored blog for the first time since (yikes) December.

Why my thrill for Leap Day? Maybe it is because I am getting older and will take any extra day that God(dess)/astronomers/geologists/calendar-creators(?) will give me. Perhaps I am finding my calendar too full and my to-do list too long. And here, before me, are 24 hours that are not normally available! Perhaps with my brand new “old lady” progressive lenses–and deep in the heart of perimenopause and that entails–I am seeing time a bit differently.

Leap Day should offer us the gift of 24 freebie hours.

My husband reminded me the other day that Leap Day, of course, is just another day (a pay day, happily enough). Of course that takes most of the fun out of the day. So here is my suggestion to the calendar-creators/scientists:

Instead of Leap Day being February 29 and a named weekday, let’s just call it Leap Day: the Day that Falls between Feb. 28 and Mar. 1.

Every four years, you flip the calendar page from February to a page called Leap Day. After Leap Day, you flip the calendar to March. No date, no weekday name. No appointments. No work. Just an extra day: a gift.

In my version of Leap Day, you have 24 Golden Extra Hours. You can party all day, sleep all day, catch up on paperwork, do your taxes, clean the bathroom. Or don’t clean the bathroom. Break some personal rules! Eat that cheesecake: you can’t track calories on a day that doesn’t really exist! Skip the gym, dance in the street.

So, even though Leap Day is technically Wednesday, February 29, keep this idea in mind and do something out of the usual on Leap Day. At the very least savor the idea of an “extra” day. Then comment below and let me know what you did to commemorate your day (even if it is not as ideally extra as it should be). I’ll post what I did.