Today's Schedule

That moment where the blissful glee of being at home with nothing to do that must be done passes and you still have a few days of vacation left and the panic wells up in your throat a little wondering how the time will get passed, like it was some sort of baton.  That particular bile is followed by the chunks of fear that you are somehow behind.

That moment when your child wakes with a fever and you have to change your plans, the things you were going to do and instead make soup and ferry Gatorades back and forth and sweep Saltines crumbs out of your bed, wondering how long to let the cartoons run for.

The moment when you just surrender to it and put the fuzzy leggings back on and take your bra off under the sweatshirt because, eh, who cares.  You might even have left the house like that.  Then you spend most of the day working on a puzzle and eating more chocolate and marveling at your expanding middle, it's eagerness to claim territory.  Nothing gets bought or sold.  Managed or recorded.  Monitored.  You have a third cup of coffee before 2pm.  And you still feel sleepy, which is weirdly okay, too.

Time slows down to this otherworldly pace and your house becomes the universe and your family the only only living beings within it and you just orbit one another in an unregimented fashion and forget what day it is.  You lie splayed across one another's laps, or rolling on the floor getting covered in dog hair but who cares put those jammies in the hamper and just put on other ones.

Who cares, who cares, who cares.

You don't even look at the clock.  You're supposed to go out but the kid's fever and cough keep you in and that's fine and then even the cabin fever passes and you are back to wondering at the massive elasticity of time and its ability to change you, as if to another species.