weekend time

It sounds like either the setup for a joke or a trite epigram, but for all of my life I have struggled with time. I remember the mental struggle to learn to read analog clocks in kindergarten, and Sam, the one boy in our class who already could. We all looked up to him for it.

I've always lost track of time, underestimated the amount of time things take, hated wasting time, searched in vain for ways to kill long awkward hours, and pondered the extreme subjectivity of the length of passing time. Time is a problem, but also an answer, of sorts. Thinking of time as a fourth dimension helped me to be able to imagine multiple dimensions for the most difficult math class I ever took. I could never mentally comprehend above ten dimensions, however.

Lately I just don't have enough time. I'm not sure where it goes. Sometimes I can tell that I fit a lot into my hours, but sometimes it seems impossible to do more than go to work, go for a run, and make dinner-- that's a whole day.

My Saturday was swallowed up by getting our taxes done. Erik used TurboTax to fill out the forms while I went through our files and got rid of records older than 2005. We had so much extra paperwork that I had to go out and buy a new shredder, which itself overheated from use. We also went on a wild goose chase for takeout for lunch, and later to see "Pan's Labyrinth" at CineMagic down the street.

Sunday morning I walked downtown, ran the Shamrock Run, waited in the long line for the beer garden, and walked home. Then I did laundry, tidied up, called my mom, and ran errands with Julie, who was dogsitting a friend's pug. One of our stops was Portland Nursery, which should probably not be attempted with two pugs in tow. It was flat-out exhausting. I spent the afternoon working in the yard a bit, trying to salvage some plants from the mess that stump-grinding made of various garden beds. I was pretty disappointed that after the tree trimming and removal didn't damage a thing, the stump grinding destroyed at least one entire bed.

I still feel like I'm getting back to normal after being gone for two weekends in a row, since weekends are the main time I have that's truly my own. The stupidly rescheduled time change didn't help. That's why my goal for this week is to make more efficient use of evenings. It's like a New Year's resolution, without having to wait for a turn of the calendar. Little tricks like this often work for me, as I'm easily amused and pretty gullible. I'll let you know if I come up with anything really good.