Discussing strategy.

Between the post-workout shower and the trip to Redbox to return movies you suddenly noticed on the bookshelf as you craned your neck to see if your leg was straight as it pulsed to the ceiling for the 50th time per instructions meted by the tiny pouty blonde woman on your TV who never sweats and whose long curled locks never move as she twists and crunches and plies like they do in a Bob Fosse musical (wid attitude) and puts you through an arm workout leaving you armless for up to 5 hours and mentally screaming for your bottled water to get its plastic a** out of your refrigerator and into your hands before you D.I.E. Between the post-workout shower and the trip to Redbox (grocery store, Party City, Starbucks for solace and Arco): 45 (hard-won) minutes, not including breaks to fuss over the giant Baby Huey kitten.

Between his nap and the hustle to wake him up, dress him in his gi and drive safely yet swiftly to the karate center where, as your child punches red dummies, that one chatty mom tells you, yet again, how thankful she is for Happy Meals, never asking if you go to McDonald’s, which is lucky because your son is about to turn 5 and has never been to McDonald’s and you have no intention of taking him there for a Happy Meal, ever, unless it’s over your dead body, haven’t told that woman your little family will eat dirt (preferably organic) v. going to McDonald’s and buying crap food for a new, precious, growing life and parents who need to stay healthy for the next 100 years so as to witness possible grandchildren, great-granchildren and the opening and continued success of the dolphin rescue center a certain son is destined to found and what is it with wrecking things, you wonder, as the woman carries on and you counteract being judgmental and awful by wishing McDonald’s would just get seriously zapped by alien spaceships, all McDonald’s, all over the world—and then, across all streets, the Burger Kings. Between his nap and the karate hustle: 62 minutes (not bad at all)

Between steaming vegetables, baking apple chips, whipping up the pancake batter for the next morning, food processing spinach and spices and carrot puree into a mush you will sneak into your homemade organic tomato sauce, feeding the cats wet food for the 3rd time in one day so they won’t pee in your closet, vacuuming up dog hair, singing a love song to the parakeet and drenching plants shocked by the summer that never ends, not even in November—between relentless domesticity and retrieving the boy from school: 37 (right on!) mins.

Hello tiny pouty blonde lady. Hello endless sunshine. Hello hot, garage-mouth wind. Hello giant Baby Huey kitten with your passionate purring. Shh. An increment has arrived. I am inspired.