6 Hours?
Today’s question is: Why would anyone think 6 hours is a long period of time?
Background: This year is my first year in nearly 10 years that I have 6 hours to myself every weekday. 6 hours used to seem like kind of a lot of time. Now I don’t think so.
If you want to work out during your 6 hours, you basically waste 2 hours doing it, sometimes more if you actually want to shower and look nice (I never do that, I just hang in my work out clothes all day long).
If you have to shop, well that wastes at least 5 of your 6 hours because shopping takes forever, especially if you have to go to more than one store and you don’t live all that close.
If you have a dog that you must walk, because he’s little and the coyotes will eat him up if you leave him in the yard alone, 2 hours minimum (you have to stop and get coffee or tea with your walking buddies at the local java hole, no?).
Planning and preparing the first few steps of dinner takes at least an hour as well. However if you have to look your recipe up online you’re in for 3, because well you know, you’ll have to check your email, your blog responders, your facebook, myspace and golly only knows what else while you are searching for the perfect family dinner for the night (and jeez, if you don’t have all the ingredients you’ll have to run out to the grocery store too, that could take some time).
There’s the standard house picking up that must also happen, the dishes from breakfast, the dishes from preparing nights meals, making sure the beds are made (to your standards) and picking up your little people’s clothes off the floor (why oh why can’t that stuff just magically appear in the laundry room??). That alone takes 1.5 hours at least.
If you have laundry to do you’ll be working on that for at least 2 hours and you know that has the potential for being much longer.
If you walk or drive your little people to school that could take and additional 30 minutes to an hour a day. It all depends on parking, walking, local java visits with friends, you name it it can affect the amount of time it cuts into.
If you have any sort of workmen coming to the house you are in for 1 hour minimum.
There are many other factors that can cut into your day including but not limited to:
doctors appointments for yourself and your little people
friend lunches
yard work
house work (you know real cleaning of the homestead)
reading
anything fun and out of the ordinary
tennis
paddle
swimming
running
walking
unexpected visits from friends (or expected ones for that matter)
phone calls
sick little people
sewing or other craft projects
volunteering in the little peoples school or anywhere else
etc,etc,etc.
Somedays, when my darling man walks through the door and says, so what did you do today and I say what I did, it sounds like nothing. How on earth could the entire 6 hours have slipped by? The answer is that 6 hours is not nearly as much time as anyone thinks, is it?
April 21, 2009 @ 6:57 pm
6 hrs can seem like an eternity in a dentist’s chair. we missed your posts…
Comment by Anonymous — April 22, 2009 @ 9:11 am
yeah I guess it would. Although, I get kinda relaxed at the dentist, oddly enough.
I’m back, but maybe more like every other day for the time being.
Comment by colette — April 22, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Good to see you here again.
Every other day would be fine… that would be once every 12 hours of “free” time? Hah!
Since I’ve known you I’ve never seen you sit and do nothing for a minute. Ever.
Comment by SC — April 22, 2009 @ 1:34 pm