Thursday, January 10, 2008

Time time time

I may have blogged about this before, at this point I have no idea. If I did it was so long ago that I don't remember.

Time, in my humble Einstein-free world, is NOT linear. No indeed. There are days, mornings particularily, when it stretches out in the most comfortable and relaxing way, and then there are days when it makes sudden weird and distressing jumps forward.

Today was one of them.

At five after eight I was sitting at the table with the girls, eating breakfast and talking when...I swear to you...no more than five minutes later, I looked at my watch, as I removed it for a shower and it was quarter to nine.

Now how in the name of all that is sweet and wonderful did that happen. Were we all simply in suspended animation for a mere 35 minutes???

This is not a single happening either.

It was bad. I had not been to the bakery that morning so no bread for the snacks at school. Eldest hadn't eaten at all, youngest bizarrely escaped the warp and was completely ready, I was half way ready for the shower.

T minus 10 minutes.

The worlds fastest wash. I don't remember if I did my teeth, but running my tongue around in here, I might have. We RAN out the door, to the bakery, where the kids completely scored with chocolate croissants for snack. ("Mom, can we be this late every day?")

Got them to school only four minutes late, which here is in fact very nearly on time, and we would have only been about one minute if I hadn't had to write eldest a note in Catalan explaining my entire theory of the non-linearity of time so she didn't get in trouble for being late.

Then I could breathe, and hurry over to work. No wait, I couldn't. Eldest had woken up with an eye glued closed, so I had to run to the medical center to make an appointment, but I didn't have her health card with me and I had stupidly forgotten it in the flap, so I ran home, got it, made the appointment and THEN ran to work. I got there at nine minutes after nine. Here you see, time was mercifully stretching out for me a bit...kids were at school at four minutes after, a freaking miracle in my books, and in the next five minutes I went home, went to the medical center, waited in line, made the appointment in Catalan (always dicey) and ran to work.

Utterly impossible even in a town as small as this.

My oh my.

Then there are those sayings like, "I spent a month at my ex-boyfriend's parent's house one afternoon."

See there is anecdotal evidence to back up my theory.

6 comments:

Angel said...

shoot, I wisah my kids got to school "only 4 minutes late"!! they are late so many times...and I swear it's not my fault!!! We have to leave the house by 7:45am..first bell is at 7:50am. Most of the time we don;t leave the house till then....oh well.

How's my Boy chuck doing?

Anonymous said...

You put it across superbly but AMAZINGLY simply.
Enjoyed it enormously.GM

elPadawan said...

those stolen 35 minutes have been given back to you during the rush right afterwards :).

You're not the only one experiencing this, though. Question: Would time be linear *in average*, then? Do you get back all the time you jumped?

oreneta said...

Beth, Chuch has been on a barking spree which is somewhat unpopular, but is otherwise doing his usual thing....the problem with being so close to the school is if one kid loses one thing, there is no time to make it up by walking faster. Your late. Nothin' you can do about it. I have to get better at it, I really do.

GM, thankyouverymuch.

Elpadawan, now that is an interesting thougt, I will have to ponder the balance of lost and gained time and see if we are evening out on our allotted hours, or if we are being ripped off...hmmm, a research project in the offing.....

Anonymous said...

OK...are you saying that you are a miracle worker? Please explain how you got washed, stopped at a bakery to buy stuff for the kids, get the kids in school, run to the doctors office but have to run back home, make an appointment, run to work...all from 8:45 to 9:09am? You are good!! :-)

Lynda said...

What are you saying?? I thought that was a normal morning for everybody... Can't tell you the amount of times I have been tempted to put a coat over my PJ's to take the kids to school... and I know others who do exactly that on a regular basis. And why is it that we give into our children's every desire when WE are running late?