Assigning Times

Yesterday began with a fixed appointment.  Assessing highway likelihoods, I needed to check into the Blood Bank for a periodic platelet donation at 8:30AM, which created much of what I would do the rest of the day.  Morning routine of dental, eye drops, Monday scale and waist tape measurements, and antihypertensives along with coffee, retrieving the newspaper from the driveway, and a few dishes.  It was a treadmill day off.  The Blood Bank requires its donors to eat within three hours of their appointment, so that needed to be done quickly.  Travel meant that I had to get dressed earlier than usual.  Despite arising at my usual time, to do all this, the emails and crosswords had time limits that coincided with coffee consumption.  I made it.  Donated to a worthy recipient, while I stayed tethered to a recliner for two hours, watching Netflix while I probably would have been doing other things at home.  In retrospect, being ready to leave the house earlier was a good thing.  

On treadmill days, though, I much prefer to stay in my night clothes while exercising.  But on days off, I should hasten the day by getting dressed right after the first cup of coffee, and on treadmill days, get dressed right after the session concludes.   The treadmill itself has an approximate time, not exactly to look forward to as much as assure that it gets done, which it nearly always does.  Its assigned time delays my caloric intake, as I do not like serious physical effort on a full stomach, so therefore it also marks how the rest of the day will proceed.

OLLI courses, now four days weekly, has helped frame my daylight hours.  I have to be there at set times, but I like leaving home earlier to be in their lounge for a while, either drinking coffee, chatting with an old friend at times, or exploring where my smart phone can take me.  It's not exactly productive, rarely helping me pursue anything on my Daily Task List, but a form of welcome relaxation amid other people.  So most weekdays can divide to before OLLI today and after OLLI today.

Supper, nearly always made by me, also has taken a reasonably set time of 6:30PM most evenings.  My time in the kitchen for preparation is usually minimal.  Stuff comes out of the freezer, either the day before or at the time.  A potato can go in the oven for as long as it takes.  The evening's protein rarely takes a lot of attentive time.  The vegetable goes in the microwave or boiling water.  And then we eat.

And so my daylight hours are framed by must do's that essentially always get done.  These, however, are a small fraction of my Daily Task List, most of which has no assigned time.  Thus broad swaths of writing, reading, housekeeping, and recreation need to find places inbetween activities with time allotments, or get their own time allotments.  I've not been doing very well at this, which reflects something of a shortfall between what I intended as my Semi-Annual projects and what remains to be done with two months remaining in the current cycle.  But I still have two more months to make the correction.