Metrics

We play games after breakfast here. Uno. Cribbage. Qwirkle. Waterworks. Dishes can wait. The work list is discussed (there is always work). With each card, each tile, a connection grows. We know each other better. It is subtle, but i learn to predict what they will play. The games get more difficult, more strategic.

Some days I beg off. I feel compelled to start my day, urged by habit and upbringing to complete chores early, as if a full sink at 10 a.m. says something awful about me. Other days I ache to be alone. The big homes and empty rooms of modern living suit me. I have a deep appreciation for doors, even though mine are usually open. The option of solitude is a grace not often acknowledged.

It will be sunny today, then the rain returns. Hurry, hurry to do more while we can. The weather is a capricious master, and it drives my husband mad. He cannot not work, therefore the children and I must as well. What fools we modern people are, always making lists for ourselves and condemning our imagined shortfalls and the end if the day. I hearken back two hundred years - even without artificial light there was so much more time. Progress is measured, I think, in strange metrics.

I will attempt laundry, despite the moisture that hangs heavy in the air. We will paint the house. These are Good Things. Perhaps I will steal time and waste it immersing myself in an enchanting tale of genies and golems and old New York City. An eyebrow will be raised my way if i am caught. I will apologize, but in my heart I know that my fanciful travels, the ones that change me from the inside out, those are the actions that give me meaning. That is my measure of a day well spent.