Spare Time

I was trying to remember just exactly what I used to do with my evenings before I got married and had a kid. I lived in a one bedroom apartment - so there wasn't a lot of maintenance to do. As a matter of fact, it took me almost a year of living in the same place to figure out that the dishwasher was broken, since I was subsisting primarily on TV dinners and take-out pizza.
This past week I went to Open House at my son's school, hosted three of his friends for dinner and a playdate, attended a meeting of the Dad's club, and went to the retirement party of our school's secretary. I just returned from a friend's baby shower, and soon it will be time to begin the bedtime ritual of pajamas, toothbrushing and book at bedtime. I am consciously stealing away for the minutes it takes to pound out this blog.
There is a certain relief to having each waking moment preplanned and structured. If you can get from place to place in a timely fashion and remember what you're supposed to do once you get there, it becomes a kind of zen exercise. Questioning it can become a little troublesome. Trying to incorporate a new pattern or wrinkle into a well-worn schedule can be extremely difficult. My compensation for this is home-improvement projects. Once they get going and the power tools come out, I can lose myself in the process. Equity building as a creative outlet - my wife makes lists and I wince as they grow longer, but secretly I look forward to those moments when something new is being built. A flushing toilet or a new window sash - they lie outside the rut.
I never took a shop class, and it is only now in my fifth decade of life that the nails I pound go in straight. It turns out that home repair is similar to baking - read the directions first for best results. I know that Monday is coming and the lawn needs cutting, but I confess that I wouldn't know what to do with more spare time. Before the wife and kid, I used to hang around at a pizza joint, drawing cartoons on paper plates and waiting for the next best thing. Well, how 'bout that - here it is.