Just Give Me Ten

I’m not a believer in numerology, but I think a lot, or a lot of nothing, can be defined by a span of ten minutes. I have, right now, ten minutes to write this thing, before I spend ten minutes waiting at the dry cleaners to get the last of my woolen sweaters returned to me, folded in a way I never learned from my short post-college stint at the Gap. Then I have another ten minutes to haul ass to my daughters’ school, where if I am lucky, I will wait less than ten minutes to get out of the car pool line and back on the road to home. It will take us about ten minutes of our drive back to run out of conversation, which usually consists of my asking how lunch was and one of them telling on the other one. We will get home and then spend another ten minutes settling into the afternoon routine, with me running in circles around my kitchen island, unpacking lunch boxes and doing dishes while my daughters alternate their posts in front of the open pantry door and open refrigerator door, looking for that perfect snack. Next we will spend too long doing what is really ten minutes’ worth of homework. Piano practice will follow, where each child spends ten minutes playing when it should be more like 25, but I cover for them each and every week we sit demurely with their suspiciously nice piano teacher. After that, if they are lucky, they will have ten minutes to play, after taking ten minutes to figure out what to play and another ten going to the bathroom and kicking off shoes. We’ll then spend ten minutes getting into ballet clothes, ten minutes driving there, ten minutes back, so I can try to throw fucking tacos together in about ten minutes, which will take us ten minutes to eat and now I have to stop because my ten minutes are up.

I bet it didn’t take ten minutes to read this. Like riding a bike downhill.