So Much Time

I made Lucy her favorite dinner the other night...Dutch Baby. Perhaps I will put our recipe here if you really want. Basically it is a thick pancake that fluffs up when it bakes in the oven, then sinks when it emerges (like a souffle). When it's ready we slice it like a pizza and throw a bit of powdered sugar on it. She loves it and I can recognize all of the ingredients in it, so I will make it for her just about whenever she asks.

It is so quick to make, and since I popped it into the toaster oven, it cooks even faster. I still set a timer to make sure I don't forget about it. If it puffs too high it will hit the top coils and burn in quite a nasty way resulting in a sad kid and a messy oven. (Image from Instructables. I could have said it was my photo, but my oven is WAAAAAY dirtier than that!)

When I set the timer for 12 minutes I went about my way in the kitchen, cleaned up the counter where Jake had eaten dinner, opened up some root chips and introduced 5 flavors of odd root to Lucy, put away the last groceries, and tidied the silverware  drawer.

It looked like the pancake should come out, so I took it out, sliced it up, powdered it, set up a little tray table for Lucy who very nicely asked to eat "on the couch under a blanket to be cozy." So I hooked her up and went on to line up the disaster prone plastic container nightmare in the bottom drawer next to the sink. Next I checked Tweetdeck, then went to wash my hands because they felt sticky, and as I dried off my hands...the timer beeped.

I had done all of those things in 12 minutes; and those are just the things I remember.

I always think everything takes so much time, actually, it's more like I have a sense of time that is not quite like most people. I am constantly calculating all day long, how much each action will take

I think unloading the dishwasher takes 15 minutes or more; it takes 7 at the most.

I think it takes 11 minutes to get Lucy from our kitchen to her preschool door. If you only counted actual drive time, I'd be close, but the race to the car with the inevitable falling down or forgetting something, plus the chit chat as we get out of our car at the other end makes this task at least 20 minutes, and it's really more like 25, and by the time I say hullo/goodbye to other parents it is nearly 50 minutes before I'm back at my door.

I know that it takes 3 1/2 minutes, at the most, to get to Sage's house, and it can be done faster if my son has a three inch nail in his foot and she is taking Lucy for a bit whilst we take a jaunt to the Emergency room. It takes 5 minutes to get to the closest emergency room if you drive the speed limit.
Depending on traffic it is 9 1/2-10 1/2 minutes to get to Squid's house. but I should drive slower than I do around those corners. It is 13 minutes to get to Pollyanna's and 29 minutes, at least, to get to BQ's house. It takes forever to get to Orange County from this side of the bay, and Tahoe is 3 hours 35 at 4:30 am and 5 hours 50 minutes if you leave at 4:30 pm.

Somehow, it takes nearly 4 minutes to get from the back of the house to the front of the house where we put Jake on the bus.

It takes 52 minutes to get to Safeway, buy a small bunch of groceries (if there's a list), pay for the groceries and drive home.

It takes 10 seconds for my husband to set my day off right by kissing me goodbye when he leaves for work.

A post for this blog may only take 10 minutes to write, but could take up to 3 months for me to decide to hit publish.