Time line for Saturdays

Saturdays start out having the same number of hours as other days, theoretically at least. But at some point on a typical Saturday morning, time suddenly speeds up, and in only a matter of minutes it is dinner time. At least this is how we, at our house, explain our inability to accomplish everything we have planned to do on a Saturday.


In an attempt to address the Saturday Time Compression and ensure that we have time for all the truly important things, the Hero recently drew a time line for various activities we wanted to do. On the time line he drew a large box from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. 


"That's coffee time," he announced.


Next he drew a line was drawn at 5:00. "This is dinner."


"Wait," I protested. "If coffee's from 4 to 5 and we eat at 5, when do I cook?"


He placed a tiny dot on the time line around 4:55. "There," he said.


"What about going to the gym?" I said. We have been doing this around 4 on Saturdays. Or 5. Sometimes 6.


He decided to leave that off for the time being. Other things were more important to allocate time to. He directed his attention to the start of the time line. A line at 7 a.m. indicated getting up. He then drew another large box in the space from 7 to 8. "This is the first coffee time," he said. 


By the time we had placed meals (10:00, 1:00, 7:00), snacks (9, 11:30, 12:45, 3:50, 9:30, 11:52), relaxing, further relaxing, chatting with neighbors, lounging in the yard, and other similar pursuits on the time line ("10:00 to 5:00: Ignore large weeds in yard"), we had about 14 minutes left for cleaning, laundry, outdoor work, grocery shopping and other errands, and working out.


"Maybe we don't have to do all those things every Saturday anyway," the Hero said. "Maybe we can alternate weeks of grocery shopping and working out."


"Too bad we can't grocery shop WHILE we work out," I said. "If the Y would just put in computers on the treadmills and bikes, we could put in our grocery order while we exercise, and it would be ready for us when we get there."


We agreed that if WE had to focus on two tasks at once -- computer work while drinking coffee, for example -- everyone should, even the machines at the Y. Of course many people already do multiple things as they exercise. They listen to music as they work out, they watch TV, they read Tolstoy, they try to keep from separating their back from the rest of their body, etc.


We do these things too. And in doing so we have finally discovered where the time lost during the Saturday Time Compression goes: It is held in a time bank somewhere, probably in China, and then released all at once as you are straining to make it through those last few minutes on the treadmill at the gym. You were SURE you had only 12 minutes to go, but no, now the timer says 6 hours, 27 minutes, 19 seconds. When this happens, there's only one thing to be done.


Coffee, anyone?