Slow Thursday Afternoon

Today is a wonderful slow day.

It didn't start that way. I was up at dawn to have some coffee before Mitzi and Ellie sprang out of bed. A quick shower (and my weekly pre-swimming lesson leg shaving), then off to battle thirty minutes of rush hour traffic to get to the eye doctor. A visit to confirm my contact lens prescription, back home again to pick up Ray (to drop at the train)and the youngest three kids. We zip down the highway to the YMCA. Late for class, we circle the parking lot for a decent space -- rock star parking, not B-list, Cooper chants. Check non-swimmers into playroom for babysitting. Race to Ellie's Parent and Tot swim class in time to sing "The Grand Old Duke of York" and "Wheels on the Bus". Reverse the process in order to race home to meet Mitzi's kindergarten bus.

That was about 3 hours of my Thursday.

After lunch was ingested and Joanna was settled for her nap, I turned on the television for the other three dervishes. I settled down on the couch.

I read a book. One with complex sentences and no pictures.

I dozed.

Outside, the rain sprinkled our new bushes, coating the sheets still tied to the playset, yesterday's tent-making project.

I have no guilt. The kids are watching t.v. Dinner tonight is brainless, soy burgers, buttery egg noodles, salad. Ray is out for a business dinner, not that he'd mind the menu.

Aahh.

Here's what I could have done: the dishes, the laundry, sort my kitchen junk box (the place where all the junk gets piled), clean the office, purge old files, edit the books in progress. I could've read the paper, surfed the Web, finished very very overdue thank you notes. The kids and I could've started a project with anything from our overflowing craft bin or made a pirate ship or baked cookies or read 74 picture books.

I read, I dozed. The kids overdosed on cartoons I watched as a child (The Flinstones, The Pink Panther), dizzy with excitement and not enough blinking.

It felt great.

Tonight I'll do my yoga, get the chores done, maybe start a project.

Maybe not.