What do you do all day?

This is what I'm always asked and people seem vaguely disappointed when I say "I have no idea" so I've tried to write it all out for a day and I still have no idea why it should take all this time.

8:00 am - Wifey, who returned yesterday at 4:00pm from her week plus jaunt in the far east, wakes me up to tell me she's leaving for the airport now and I'll see her again when I wake up on Thursday.

8:05 am - Little Man crawls into my bed and declines my groggy offer to snuggle - "Naw, dada, we gotta get going watching television. You can make some coffee and snuggle me on the couch."

8:10 am - Make coffee, snuggle Little Man on the couch, half watch Scooby Doo.

8:35 am - Start to put away clean dishes, wash dirty dishes, drink more coffee, make bagel & cream cheese for Little Man.

8:40 am - Relent to demands for a second cartoon, sneak in some time on the computer, take a phone call from a college friend.

9:10 am - Finish putting away clean dishes, washing dirty dishes, drinking coffee, and cleaning the floor.

9:15 am - Download a recipe for limeade - 3 limes, 2/3rds cups of sugar, 6 cups of water - and let Little Man go to town with it.

9:35 am - Finish cleaning up after the successful limeade making.

9:45 am - Little Man tells me he's bored. After entertaining several options, he decides he'd like to go play mini-golf. We decide to bike ride there, but he doesn't want to ride the tandem, he wants to ride his own bike. I start to convince him we should use the tandem.

9:50 am - We're going to be taking out out bikes. We leave for the course, about 3 miles away.

12:30 pm - Return from golf. He's upset with me because I wouldn't let him call himself stupid, worthless, or a failure when he missed shots. I make him lunch and he sulks off to his room.

12:45 pm - Finish cleaning up from lunch, put a load of laundry in, start cleaning family room.

1:00 pm - Make my lunch, read some of the Sunday Times, exchange some emails.

2:00 pm - Leave the house for the airport to pick up mother-in-law (aka "Granny") who has returned from her vacation with a staph infection inside her cast.

3:00 pm - 2 big traffic jams later, arrive at airport, load up Granny's stuff

3:15 pm - Donut & coffee break with Granny and Little Man

3:30 pm - Take Granny grocery shopping, pick up more limes and hot dogs and other essentials.

3:50 pm - Leave grocery store, hope for no more traffic jams.

4:30 pm - Arrive at Granny's, doublepark in the alley and take everything up the stairs, realize that I didn't feed her cat once while she was gone bc Wifey never gave me the keys to her place, get Little Man into his tae kwon do uniform and head on over for his lesson.

5:00 pm - Drop off Little Man at tae kwon do, go home, put away groceries, take out garbage, read more Sunday Times.

6:15 pm - Pick up Little Man from tae kwon do and, despite the fact he got donuts earlier today, let him have his weekly McDonalds tonight because of his anxiety at missing out on a Legion of Superheroes happy meal toy. He gets Timber Wolf (a favorite) so he's ecstatic. He rules over the playland while I read The Week.

7:15 pm - Leave for Little Man's make-up guitar lesson. His instructor canceled at the last minute yesterday.

7:25 pm - Arrive for lesson and I realize I forgot my book, read old copy of Newsweek instead while he works on powercords.

8:05 pm - Lesson is over, his teacher briefs me on what Little Man is going to work on this week, we head on home

8:25 pm - At home, we should go to bed, but he hasn't gotten his evening "movie" (a half hour TV show) so I let him watch while I do another load of laundry and clean up the kitchen & hallway floors. While getting out the floor cleaner, I notice some compact flourescent lightbulbs were put in the wrong place so I decide to move them to the upstairs closet where, due to our misinformed purchase of a few Ikea lamps, we have a gloriously diversified collection of lightbulbs.

8:35 pm - Lightbulb falls out of cardboard container as I take it upstairs. It bounces once, twice, three times then smashes into the carpet on the stairs. I see environmental damage everywhere.

8:40 pm - Begin first of three vacuumings of the stairs.

8:55 pm - Little man is done with his movie, but I'm not done vacuuming. I try to think of something that will take a long time to do, then tell him to take a shower and brush his teeth.

9:10 pm - After the usual hunt for his retainer, we finally hit the sheets. He doesn't want to read a story together, but rather have us each read one of his Bone books. He lets me know when he hits a funny part, everytime he hits a funny part

9:30 pm - Still reading Bone, I can't interrupt even though I know we're over an hour behind betime schedule. He's reading, right?

9:50 pm - Too tired to read anymore, Little Man puts the book down and starts to snuggle me. I turn off the lights and snuggle back.

9:55 pm - Little Man starts flipping around the bed, trying upsidedown positions, sideways positions and putting various parts of him on me - feet, head, arms, legs - before I get the idea to turn on a fan and have it blast straight at him.

10:03 pm - Little Man is snoring. I should get some sleep.

10:28 pm - I can't fall asleep

10:30 pm - Watch the last half of Big Love and then the Daily Show. Still not tired.

11:30 pm - Watch the AFL-CIO Democratic debate, eat some cherries, still not tired

12:30 am - Give up on TV, go back to bed.

12:45 am - Still not tired

1:03 am - Last time I remember looking at the clock

7:14 am - First time I remember looking at the clock. Little Man is up - ugh only 9 hours sleep, he's going to be cranky.

7:20 am - Start making breakfast, start making this post.