Einstein was right.

Einstein was right. Covid-19 proves it.

In his theory of special relativity, he looked at “space-time.” That’s where the three dimensions of space are linked with the dimension of time in the space-time continuum. So, we don’t just live in a place and we don’t just live in a certain time; we occupy “space-time.” Then, in his theory of general relativity, he realized that gravity could cause distortion in space-time, that it would warp space-time. Think of it as the weight of something pressing down like a marble on a blanket of space-time.

I study Time. I read physics books about it, science fiction about it, watch movies about it. But on some level, it’s non-intuitive. You just can’t wrap your head around it.

Until Covid-19.

My days used to begin, proceed, and end in a very linear path. (That’s called the Arrow of Time.) I woke up, did things, and ultimately went to bed. Many times, with my always-disrupted sleep cycle, things re-started somewhere around 11 p.m., but they still moved. Linearly. One minute after another.

Until Covid-19.

I still wake up (thank goodness!), and I still walk downstairs to my computer. Somewhere around the ninth or tenth news story – or maybe it’s the fourth or fifth review of the peak Covid-19 projections by state or the map of cases around the world or does the size of the dose of the virus make a difference and what about serum antibodies – time starts to leak. Or warp.

For a while, when I was researching the best prototype of face mask to sew – elastic or fabric ties or T-shirt ropes? with or without a pocket for a filter? pleated or form-fitting? – time actually disrupted. Ruptured, the physicists call it, and it’s what a black hole does.

When two black holes collide, they send gravitational waves rippling through space-time. I think the black hole of Covid-19 news updates collides with the black hole of Facebook and distorts my space-time. You probably know this scientific phenomenon as a “time sink.”

Because next thing I know, when I go upstairs – when I move my gravity-weighted body upstairs – it’s like a whole different day. I’m not quite sure where the day went.

Because I’ve bent space-time.

So maybe I’ll do something noteworthy, like go skiing. That used to be one thing in a day of many things. Now, I’ll come back from skiing, take a shower, and the whole day is gone!

That’s what happens when there’s an actual event – skiing. Many days, I’ll come upstairs and … the whole day disappears! I have so warped time that it just … folded in on itself. I am living in a Star Trek wormhole.

I’ve tried looking at the clock to see if it’s still moving at a regular pace (which is sort of pointless because Einstein said it was all relative anyway), but when I look away; whole hours pass.

In fact, some days Thursday happens before I’ve ever had Tuesday and Wednesday!

I’ve been narrowing it down a little. If I have a Zoom conversation at 10 a.m., Time holds steady for a while: Zoom keeps track and does a 40-minute countdown. But around 11 a.m., it suddenly becomes 3 p.m. The wormhole must be in there somewhere.

There’s external evidence, too. Before Covid-19, we ran the dishwasher maybe once a week. Now, we eat the same number of meals – even re-use mugs and dishes – and the dishwasher needs running every other day. Having soup each night just adds a few soup bowls; that shouldn’t explain it. Time is warping.

Passover was eight days. I don’t think so. I’ve never finished eight days with leftover chocolate macaroons, but there they are. I even loaded up and had three yesterday. (Was that yesterday?)

I can induce a total time warp. I can actually cause a black hole collision and a total rupture of time by simply pulling out a jigsaw puzzle. Time stops for jigsaw puzzles … but then it suddenly accelerates when you look up at the clock.

I wonder if Einstein did jigsaw puzzles.

Survey Time

I’m a sucker for surveys. Just today, I filled out the survey for my shopping trip to Fred Meyer, sent in a Recycle It Right Tip for Alaska Recycles Day, and told my credit union what I think about them. Okay, I admit, there’s a fine line between filling out a survey and entering a contest.

I won’t do Facebook surveys or quizzes. I don’t care what my stripper stage name might be or which children’s book character I am. Well, actually, I do care, but the shame of caring outweighs the impetus to actually find out. I like my surveys to come from universities. I like to be part of Research.

Years ago, I discovered the University of Pennsylvania’s “Authentic Happiness” Questionnaire Center while conducting workshops to help younger people clarify their direction, but how can anyone resist a Survey of Character Strengths with 240 questions? Especially when they conclude your character strengths are love of learning, curiosity, and creativity?

Then I took the Grit Survey (also at the Authentic Happiness Questionnaire Center), developed by Angela Duckworth, who defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Since I equate “long-term” with “interminable” and the quest for New Things as a prime directive, I didn’t expect to excel. Turns out I have less grit than my age group but more grit than my occupation group (which, at that time, was “artist”).

I’ve also tested myself for hidden, unconscious bias with “Project Implicit” (for Implicit Association Tests). And yes, I have compelled my husband to do “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” from the New York Times.

I’ve mentioned here that I was researching Time-with-a-capital-T. That took me to the book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Claudia Hammond. She has an entire chapter called “Why Time Speeds Up As You Get Older,” right up my Third Third alley.

It’s not just that one year is only 1/65th of my life but was once 1/25th or 1/30th of it, and that 1/65th seems to fly a whole lot faster than 1/25th. It’s that the bulk of our lifetime memories take place between the ages of 15 and 25; psychologists call this the “reminiscence bump,” and “the key to the reminiscence bump is novelty.” With all the novel experiences of young adulthood, our memories are chock full, and all that fullness had to take time. With less novelty as we grow older, the blank spots in our memories don’t take up much time. All the more reason to explore New Things!

Also lurking within Time Warped was Prof. Philip Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory. I like him; I’ve quoted him before. And now he’s identified Time Perspective Types, depending on how much we’re oriented to the future or the past. The Present-Oriented Person is “focused on what is rather than what might be or used to be,” but you can be Present-Hedonistic or Present-Fatalistic. Then there’s the Future-Oriented Person and the Past-Oriented Person.

Apparently, “the greatest chance of happiness … comes from a combination of past-positive and future perspectives, with just the right amount of present-hedonistic, living-in-the-moment thrown in.” Uh, oh. Turns out I’d better add a lot more hedonism to my days and a lot more perseverance to my future. (Personally, I just think his idea of having a fun day is different from my idea of a fun time, but then there is my grit problem….)

Now for the big question that Hammond poses as the essential difference in how we view time. Answer the question before reading on! 

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If you think “the meeting is on Monday, then it is time that is moving, like a constant conveyor belt where the future comes toward you [time-moving metaphor]. If you believe the meeting to be on Friday, then you have a sense that you are actively moving along a time-line towards the future – the ego-moving metaphor.”

So are we fast approaching Thanksgiving, or is Thanksgiving coming up fast?

Errands: A Love/Hate Relationship

I had a whole Third Third afternoon free to do what I wanted; I just had a couple of errands. Just a couple, but you know how this goes: the errands ate the whole afternoon. The trip to the grocery store got compounded by an out-of-stock item; the trip to pick up compost put me at the end of the line of pickups unloading at the dump; the simple birthday card wasn’t so simple (if you want just the right birthday card). One afternoon vaporized.

Yet there are Good Errands and Bad Errands.

This is a Good Errand:

• It happens conveniently, maybe even while you’re doing something else and the errand is close by or related.

• It may involve a bit of serendipitous good fortune: running into a friend or finding some other thing along the way.

• It’s intrinsically good: recycling, a volunteer task or delivery, a trip to the library

• It takes the time you thought it would take or less.

• It’s interesting.

• You have a good attitude.

This is a Bad Errand:

• It’s imperative even if you don’t have the available time so you end up rushing or feeling rushed.

• It involves cancellations, misprinted phone numbers, malfunctioning equipment, bad directions, and assorted other kinks in the universe.

• It’s related to a do-over-and-over-again task, especially the do-over-and-over-again task of preparing dinner.

• You have a bad attitude.

There is movement between Good Errands and Bad Errands:

• Good Errands are still Bad Errands if there are simply too many of them.

• A Bad Errand can be recharacterized as a Good Errand if you feel cooped up in the house and the errand is a way to Get Out of the House. Or if you can do the Bad Errand on a bicycle.

• Even a Bad Errand has the opportunity to transform itself into a Good Errand if it encounters a lot of appreciation, gratitude, and courtesy. It can even elevate itself to a Mission!

What’s a Mission? A unique self-motivating errand that launches a search for solution.

Self-motivating means that finding a dress for a particular occasion is only a Mission if you like clothes-shopping, dressing-up, and attending banquets; otherwise, it’s an errand. My missions involve crafts. The search for the perfect butter dish consumed me for a few years, as did the teapot quest.

There’s a BIG difference between an Errand and a Mission.

How an Errand Became a Mission: A True-Life Account

1. You bought an oil pourer on sale at the Corning Museum of Glass and schlepped it back to Alaska because you were really proud of your purchase. It was perfect for drizzling oil over vegetables before roasting.
   
2. Somehow the ridges on the pouring nozzle got smaller and the cork-thing became loose and now oil spills all over the place.
   
3. The usual grocery store doesn’t sell cork-like nozzle things. The whole contraption sits on the kitchen counter for months, reminding you of the necessary Bad Errand. Every time you roast vegetables, you glare at it.
4. Finally, one day, you’re in the mood to deal with it as an interesting Good Errand. You go to the bottling store you’d discovered once.
5. Except that the road the bottling store is on is under construction and you are detoured all over the stupid area and besides, they don’t have it anyway, and this is now a Really Bad Errand.
6. The bottling store directs you to a restaurant supply store. You have never been to a restaurant supply store before. Hmm, things are looking up: before you were a go-fer, now you’re an investigator … on a Mission!
7. The restaurant supply store has nozzles; they have packs of 12 nozzles! They have lots of startling things; this is a New Thing, a new discovery. The solution is taking shape; things are looking do-able. Now you need a gadget store for one nozzle.
8. That means a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, the kind of store that’s good for about two visits a year to gape at the sheer variety of things that exist to buy. And there it is, a package of two!
   
9. Mission accomplished!

Time -- Lots of Time -- for Shoes

Walking through an airport, I spotted a zillion people on line. No, not at the security line, not at the gate. They were waiting for coffee. This is a phenomenon of our Third Thirds: people waiting on long lines for coffee concoctions. They didn’t used to do that. And it’s not just airports; it’s everywhere.

I don’t drink coffee, never even tasted it. My parents drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, so somehow those two behaviors got linked in my mind.

So while I don’t stand in long coffee lines, I do waste time. I waste lots of time. I waste time wondering what to do, I waste time procrastinating about doing it. I waste time all by myself, I waste time staring at things. In my oomph-less, sluggish state, I can waste away hours and hours, occasionally enjoying it, mostly beating my immobile, do-nothing self up about it.

But when I finally gather enough oomph to DO something, I don’t like anyone else wasting my time. And I CERTAINLY do not like the Internet wasting my time. For example….

I wear a Nike Air Pegasus running shoe. I have worn it my whole lifetime of running. (The running I have not been able to do because of the knee injury a year ago, but the shoes – like me – were still deteriorating.) I used to go into Sports Authority, pick out the Nike Air Pegasus size 7.5, buy two-for-one, and be set for a couple years. But then Sports Authority went out of business, and online shopping reared its ugly head.

But now that I’m running again – short distances, doctor! – and feeling my psyche lift, I needed new shoes. The first hurdle was with Nike because there are two Air Pegasuses for sale: 35 and 34. Uh, oh. You know what that means. That means Research and Reader Reviews. 35 is the newer version and it costs $120; 34 is last year’s, and it costs $80.

In our previous Thirds, didn’t we just walk into a store and ask for “sneakers”?

Now I have to research whether 35 is a significant improvement over 34. Why did they have to mess with my favorite Air Pegasus anyway?!? So I wander down the rabbit hole of 35s and 34s (just like the rabbit hole of Rummikub versions), and finally decide: go with cheaper.

The millennial daughter – who is not fazed by any of this – tells me to check out Zappos, which I do. I pick my color (Barely Grey/Deep Jungle/Light Pumice), I look at it frontwards and backwards and I listen to Nellie show me about the shoe on a video. Then I place my order. Uh, oh. They don’t have my size.

Next up is Dick’s Sporting Goods. He has a special deal today for $10 off, so I have to speed up my investigations. Dick has different colors than Zappos did, so after looking at all my choices, I pick white/purple. I fill out my billing address, my shipping address, I create an account, I am ready! But Dick says “Only one delivery method is available for this product: Expedited at $24.99.” Oh, I know what that’s about. That’s about living in Alaska. So much for my $10 saving. I ditch Dick.

Then it’s Foot Locker. They have even more different colors. And while “Store pickup not available at any Anchorage locations,” Ship to Home has an asterisk: “*Ships to the 48 contiguous United States.” So it’s clear Foot Locker doesn’t want my business AT ALL.

Two hours later, I’m back with Dick. But this time, Dick is shipping to my friend Sharon’s address in Seattle … for free! I’ll see Sharon in a month, and she’ll have my shoes waiting for me.

As you know, I’m just emerging from a long-enduring state of depression, so you might have thought this might put me over the edge. But despite all this wasting of my time, all this rerun of we-don’t-count-Alaska-as-the-U.S., all this confusion over colors and shoes and 35s or 34s and decisions, decisions, decisions; for a few hours, I had a respite. Instead of inexplicable sadness, I had a REASON. I had righteous frustration. I had FURY. I had faced the shoe lords, and I had taken a stand.

Now let’s see if I end up with shoes.

Philosophy on the NY Subway

As I prepared for my month in Manhattan, I discovered that I could get a personalized MetroCard – with a photo! – that would get me half-price on the subways and buses.

You have to know the transit lover in me to know the ecstasy that overtook me. I phoned them up right away: yes, I could come in with two photo IDs even before my birthday and I could get it right then and there. Hooray for turning 65!

So, of course, I took my sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, excited self down to 3 Stone Street as soon as I arrived. First, I had to find Stone Street, then I had to find how to travel there. I’m renting in a less-than-familiar part of Manhattan so I’m in the midst of direction-confusion and am back to writing little cheat sheets to myself after I examine all the permutations and combinations of MTA Trip Planner and my maps. Plus, I still have to learn how to lock the doors to where I’m staying.

I waited for my number to be called and headed to Window #1, and I received a gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with my photo on it!

I can’t paint an exact picture of it here because I no longer have it. (Sob!)

After getting my gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with my photo on it, I calculated which was the best deal for purchase. I could pay for a trip costing $1.35/trip; I could get a 7-day Unlimited Ride Reduced-Fare MetroCard for $16 or 11.8 rides in a week, or $2.29/day; or I could get a 30-day Unlimited Ride Reduced-Fare MetroCard for $60.50 which was the best deal in the whole wide world!

So off I went to the nearest subway station, to the fare machine. Nothing about it was intuitively obvious, but I came to the big existential question of the day: Was I going to “Add Value” or “Add Time”?

What would you say?

What would you say if you’d saved the attached quote in your journal for many years?

I can’t add hours to the day. I can’t add more days to a week or a month, but value? I can add value to my card (by putting money on it), value to my ride (by going for the 30-day option), and value to my whole life and the planet!

So I added value. Something didn’t look right. I went back to 3 Stone Street, got a new number and window #5: “You weren’t supposed to Add Value. You were supposed to Add Time. Nothing we can do about that now. We’ll take back your gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with your photo on it and get you a refund in six weeks. Here’s a temporary, boring, plain old card you can go put another $60.50 on.”

Which I did.

Back to the station, I swiped my card in the swiper. It said "expired." I tried again. It said, “Just Used.” I tried another gate: “Just Used.” I’ll spare you all the back and forth trips for remedies. Eventually, a station agent let me in, and I boarded a train, slightly dreading that I wouldn’t be able to get back because my brand-new boring and untested MetroCard wouldn’t work.

But as I swiped it for the return, I saw that the message said, “Pass Expires 4/12/18.” Oh, it wasn’t expired! It was giving me handy consumer information! Bless those tiny little LED-ish messages that can’t be read in dimly lit stations! I just pressed the turnstile and was through.

This was a Big Day in my Third Third:

• Turning 65 comes with unanticipated thrills! I have unlimited reduced fares on subways, buses, even the Long Island Rail Road. If I’m never heard from again, check with the MTA.

• I still think I was adding value, not time. In the universe, I’m right. In the MTA, they’re right, and I’m finished arguing even though I did tell them they should have the capability to over-ride the magnetic strip.

• They say we have to do really difficult things to keep our brains active, and plunging myself into a new environment, negotiating bureaucracies, figuring out how they could have done it better if I were in charge – all while panicking that I’d never get home – are just exercises to avoid cognitive decline. I’m not getting older, I’m getting IQ points.

• It’s always about the adventure. I took four train trips today. I saw a parking lot with cars on elevators, I went to the Museum of Math on Pi Day, heard the author of Caesar’s Last Breath talk about air, had a 99¢ slice of New York pizza, got a New York Public Library card, and walked more than 70 New York blocks. All possible because I had a temporary, boring, plain old Reduced-Fare MetroCard.

Time for Nothing

At first, I panicked.

Tim and I had just arrived in Caye Caulker in Belize by water taxi. The roads are dirt, and there is very little town. But there is also very little beach. In fact, there is no beach, no surf. You access the water off docks.

I leave Alaska desperate for daylight and warmth, and the second I actually arrive in sun and warmth, I realize sun and warmth is usually too sunny and too hot and that’s why I live in Alaska. Where will I hide from the sun? How will I get in the water?

I had three library books, four crossword puzzles, and a pack of Five Crowns (the card game). I had no laptop and two whole weeks.

This is the stuff of terror. The terror of … Nothing. Capital-N Nothing. No body-surfing, few little shops to explore, oh-my-god, I should have brought more books! What would I DO?!?

I realize it is hard to feel sympathy for a person who’s facing two weeks in Belize, but Caye Caulker seemed so EMPTY compared to our last time in Belize on the mainland. There are only three roads, no cars, and 14 days just LOOMED in front of me. (One week would have been enough; why did we decide on TWO?!)

And then it rained. The wind roared, slamming rain against all the windows. Thank goodness we were in a lovely guest house with a living room or we would have felt trapped in a cell. No one ventured out. We were all confined to quarters.

Well, at least the rain meant I didn’t have to worry about the sun.

Little by little, we discovered … activities. We kayaked around the island, bicycled, snorkeled, tossed bean bags into holes. We discovered the little bakery and went there every day for the cookie with the jam spot (me) and the cookie with the chocolate spot (Tim). The lunch special at Happy Lobster restaurant – stewed chicken with dirty rice, cole slaw, and plantains – was so good, I could have it every day. Most days, I did.

We would sit on the porch of Happy Lobster and spend hours on our Coke Zeros, people-watching, and playing Five Crowns. There is NO LIMIT to the number of Five Crowns games you can play when you’re sitting at the Happy Lobster and just … sitting.

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

Nothing means that a visit to the bakery, a walk down to the Split to jump in the water, maybe buying some bananas from the fruit lady, maybe having a conversation with folks who turn out to be from the place you used to live in New Jersey, fills your whole day. And then you take a shower which is beyond pleasurable because you are hot and sticky, and cleanliness is so totally delicious you revel in it like it’s heaven. Showers are a wonder of the world; showers are worth swooning over.

The days are filled with less and less but are filled more and more. A big excursion is to find the place where seahorses hang out. That can take hours … and it’s only a five-minute walk away. No wonder the motto of Caye Caulker is “Go Slow.”

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

It rains every day, but you realize that as long as you’re in a bathing suit, it doesn’t matter. It is perfectly easy to swim in the rain, even to get caught in a downpour in a bathing suit.

And when you made a mistake and left the umbrella at the ice cream lady, your to-do list the next day is only “walk down to ice cream lady.” If she’s not there till 4, somehow your day moves along till 4. Maybe you were watching seahorses or pelicans or wondering why the mud on that one road is green, and next thing you knew, it was 4:00.

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

Now that I’m back in the land of This Thing and That Thing and Too Many Other Things, I appreciate the true value of Nothing. I need to keep it in my life.

A Kink in the Universe

Look at all of us who know what a Fraud Bomb is! My friend Connie says “Me, too” is a powerful affirmation of belonging to the human race. Thank you all for sharing.

Quite a while ago, I witnessed an astonishing example of how the universe can annihilate someone’s day. It was so supernatural, I’m repeating it here, and I bet you’ll laugh.

Years back, when I was a manager for Federal Express, part of my job involved going out on check rides with the couriers. The couriers would tell me about their regulars, about wild things that had happened, about life-or-death “saves” with speedy deliveries. They took a lot of pride in doing their jobs, and we had a good time.

One day, it was time to ride with Rick, so off we went on the airport delivery route.

As we pulled into the airport terminal, Rick unloaded his packages and headed inside. The airport was deserted – that midmorning, uninhabited wasteland kind of feel to it – and Rick strode over to an airline counter. As he approached, the agent disappeared into the back room, so Rick chose to stop at a different airline first. Pretty flexible, I thought, chooses the most efficient option.  He delivered the one package and turned back to the first counter. Eight people were now on line! Where had they come from? How did they get there so fast? Rick waited it out, obviously frustrated.

Afterwards, we got in the van and headed to the international terminal. Inexplicably, Rick’s ID card wouldn’t work in the electronic scanner; we had to wait for security to clear us. It was a big delivery – was that when the wheel on the hand truck rolled off? Rick had to haul the packages in separately. Two deliveries and his deliveries-per-hour had bitten the dust.

Finally, finished with the airport, we headed out. The road was pretty clear, not too many cars. Out of nowhere, a renegade car cut right in front of us and signaled for a left turn. Rick stopped quickly and then waited. (There was no room to go around.) Suddenly, cars FILLED the other lane; it could have been a funeral train. It went on forever. Finally, there was an opening...and the car in front stalled.

Rick turned to me and said, “Can you see it?”

Astonished, eyes gaping, I whispered, “Yes, what is it?”

“This,” he said, matter-of-factly, “is a kink in the universe. Things are not flowing, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. We’d do better just to stop for a while and wait it out.”

Now I had expected to observe a courier doing his rounds, not catch an eyewitness view of a cosmic phenomenon. But it couldn’t be denied: Coincidence couldn’t have been as devastating as this kink was. Any minute, someone was going to drop dead as they reached to sign for a package or an earthquake was going to swallow the van in a crack. Instead, customers and drivers just kept doing bizarre, unpredictable, incredibly inconvenient things right in front of us.

You can get up on the wrong side of the bed, you can imagine that things are simply not going your way; but Rick and I had witnessed something truly profound: The whole universe had ALIGNED to screw up Rick’s day. I was there; he had a witness. Nothing was catastrophic, and I’m inclined to think it wasn’t INTENTIONAL, but the events of the day were uniformly annoying to a scientifically astounding degree.

We pulled to the side of the road and waited.

Now, I should have thought of Rick as soon as every chore seemed to require a customer service live chat. Instead, I waded through an entire morning of cancellations, misprinted phone numbers, malfunctioning equipment, and absurd bad luck. It wasn’t until a receptionist told me the doctor was running behind and would have to reschedule my appointment that I realized what had happened. It was bigger than both of us. Calmly, courteously, and fully comprehending, I went home and took a nap.

When I woke up, the kink had passed.

How long is eight minutes?

You too can expand Time. I did it by driving a race car.

Let me explain.

The latest in my various efforts to delay cognitive decline is researching Time. (You might think this is only evidence that cognitive decline has already begun, but I’m hoping the jury is still out.)

There’s the heavy-duty stuff of physics (Einstein and relativity and space-time and lots of things that don’t make normal sense) and there’s the less heavy stuff of psychology and the perception of time. Both are full of things that get titled “paradox” (“something that seems absurd but expresses a possible truth”).

Here’s an example about the perception of Time: Researchers say there’s a difference between how people describe the duration of time while something is still happening and how they judge it after it’s over. A boring wait may seem like it’s taking forever, but afterwards – since nothing interesting happened and you have no details in your memory – you judge it to be shorter. On the other hand, if you had an interesting experience with a lot of emotional color and time just flew, afterwards you have so many details to recount, it seems like it took longer. They call this the time paradox.

So now we’re at last weekend. Tim had a secret New Thing excursion for me: a trip to Extreme Fun Center in Wasilla. Ooh, what a discovery! This was right up my alley. I saw the sign that said “Cart Races” and I was in the building in no time (just an expression, not a paradox).

I LOVE speed and motion when there’s no chance of breaking my neck. Extreme Fun Center has whole bunches of arcade games and little kid soft areas, laser tag and birthday party rooms. But the big square footage is a racetrack with carts. The price: $20 for an 8-minute ride.

Sense of time duration before: “Yikes, that’s a lot of money for only eight minutes.  A measly eight minutes. This will be a rip-off.”

First we have to watch a 3-minute safety video. Then we put on black helmet liners and big helmets. Then we go out to our car. When we’re all buckled in, we’re activated.

Whoosh! It was amazing! I could go so fast I’d barely make the turns, then open up on the straightaway. Every turn took incredible concentration – when to speed up in the middle of it, when to keep from crashing into far walls. Zinging left, flying through a turn at maximum speed, correcting at the last second. It was so intense I think I fogged up my helmet’s visor.

Sense of time during: “Every muscle in my neck and shoulders is so tense and my heart is beating so rapidly, will I be able to last eight minutes? This is way more than eight minutes.”

When you’re physically excited and your heart rate picks up, time seems to slow down. This is the experience of slow motion during a car accident. While in the middle of the action, you’re sure it’s all taking a very long time even if you’re not experiencing slow motion.

Eventually, the checkered flag signaled the end of the race and we had to drive our cars back into the pit. I took off my helmet and became a babbling fool recapping every turn, spin, pass, and lap.

Sense of time after: “I got a great ride for eight minutes. Way cool!”

My continuing quest for New Things? It’s not just fun, not just anti-boring; it expands Time!

“Experiences that are exciting and new expand time. … The greater the store of lived experience—that is, the more emotional coloration and variety one’s life has—the longer one’s lifetime seems, subjectively.” – from Felt Time: The Psychology of How We Perceive Time

Bring on the race cars!

Who cooks dinner?

So let’s say you enter your Third Third earlier than your spouse: who does the cooking?

Do you:

1. Do more of the cooking because he/she is still working (and earning income) and wouldn’t it be nice for them to come home to a hot meal? (with pleasure)
2. Continue to share the cooking/household chores because you worked hard to establish an egalitarian household and you’re committed to that in your relationship? (with pleasure)
3. Do more of the cooking because … (same as #1, but with resentment)
4. Continue to share the cooking/household chores because … (same as #2, but with resentment)

I know there are some people who are delighted with their newfound time to cook and prepare meals. Those are the women who lined up at the Friends of the Library book sale in front of the cookbook shelves. Those are the folks who take photos of the meals they’ve prepared and post them on Facebook. (Yes, I do know ONE MAN who does this.)

I’m not those people. Mostly, I kind of forget about eating until I have a headache, BUT when I cook, I like it to be healthful, non-meat, and not processed. That takes time. This is the weekly cycle we’re on:

Monday: I cook delicious healthy meal with side dishes. I have to stop what I’m doing at 3:30 for this to be possible, but I am pleased with my effort, and my efforts are appreciated.

Tuesday: I cook delicious healthy meal with side dishes. I have to stop what I’m doing at 3:30 for this to be possible, but I am pleased with my effort, and my efforts are appreciated.

Wednesday: I have to make extra trips to the store for a missing ingredient that is not in stock at two stores (corn meal!?). This particular meal turns out to have a few more steps in it than I’d anticipated so my day gets eaten up with meal preparation. I decide husband is not properly appreciative. I have to stay up late to get my personal stuff done that I couldn’t get done during the day.

Thursday: I assemble a meal of delicious leftovers. I watch husband like a hawk, evaluating whether he is eating his way through the leftovers so we won’t get another meal out of them. I fill out angry survey form for grocery store that did not have corn meal in stock.

Friday: Husband is picking up on clues. He starts saying things like, “I’m making a list with some items I want to cook for a meal. Do you have anything to add?” I feel bad because he has contributed 40+ work hours to our household this week and now I am frightening him back into egalitarianism because he knows me and knows I am ready to blow. I feel very grumpy about all this, but I did not quit my job to cook dinners.

 

My husband and I had achieved a very nice balance during our working years. He did things; I did things. We both parented. Every now and then, I’d get miffed because my things were do-over-and-over-again things and his were big-project-achieved kind of things, but we worked out a balance of effort. I’ve never mowed the lawn; he’s never tended the garden. If something broken required glue, he fixed it; if it required sewing, I fixed it. We rotated regular meal preparation, but mostly he cooked food, and I cooked meals. Things felt even.

But now, I have more flexible, “leisure” time. And in talking to many women friends, that creates a guilty burden of “we should be” cooking dinner. And the problem with guilty burdens is that eventually resentment finds its way in. I’m sure my husband would say I shouldn’t feel this way, that I’ve earned my time, that I contribute to the household (if not at the same income level as before), but that’s because he’s nicer than I. He’d also say peanut butter is fine for dinner.

So other than giving myself a personality transplant (attempted, never successful), I’ve been trying to come up with solutions to the perceived Dinner Burden:

1. Maybe peanut butter, yogurt, or whatever scrounging yields can be counted as a meal. Maybe dinner-as-meal is a Second Third thing. Maybe Third Third dinner needs to be re-imagined as bits-of-this-and-that, not a whole meal, but still sitting down together. Maybe a dinner meal can then be a surprise kind of thing, as in “Oh! You made dinner! What a nice surprise!”


2. Browse my magazines and collected recipes and get enthused about cooking one of those creations?


3. See a lot more movies at the Bear Tooth and eat dinner there?


4. More giant soups, more salmon, sandwiches? Great volumes of leftovers? Start a recipe folder of “easy”?

Taking suggestions….

Anatomy of a Sleepless Night

When I discovered the Big Three recommendations for a good Third Third (structure, purpose, and a sense of community), I knew my most obvious challenge was probably going to be sleeping. Or rather, sleeping on a regular basis on a regular schedule for a regular number of hours. Or, to be more accurate, sleeping. Period.

Some people fall asleep. They close their eyes, and sleep comes to them. With my husband, sleep overtakes him. For me, sleep hides. I have to hunt for it, coax it out of hiding, and hope it decides to stay.

I used to follow little schedules: no exercising after 8 p.m. Begin sleep readiness and shut-down behaviors at 9 p.m. Go into bed at 10 p.m. Hope.

When Sophie was born, that was shot to hell. I don’t think she slept through the night till she was eleven. Even if she’d slept, I’d be Alert to Her. After I stopped being crazy from lack of sleep (Did I stop?), I adapted. I simply acknowledged that every now and then, I’d “go around the clock,” stopped fretting about it, and went along pretty smoothly. If you don’t worry about being tired, you can find that you don’t feel tired. But that was my Second Third.

Right now, writing this, I’m sort of dulled. Not comatose, but just a step up. No zip. I had a long, long night.

10 p.m. Uh, oh, I already knew I’d messed up. I was reading Nicci French’s Thursday’s Child, which is fourth in her series. Her books are intelligent and clever, but they kind of make my hair stand on end. I’d decided it was a daytime-only read book, but at 10 p.m., I’d already messed that up.

11 p.m. Go into bed. Pick some reading material that will force Nicci French out of my head. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time had worked the night before. Tim’s head hits the pillow, and he’s out.

12 a.m. According to general relativity, time moves more slowly closer to the earth’s surface because of gravity so, for example, a clock at sea level will run slower than one on a mountaintop. But is the clock itself actually slowing down – its mechanism and all – or is the elapsed time slowing down? Would the clock show a minute and ten seconds, for example, or would it show a longer minute? Obviously, Stephen Hawking is not putting me to sleep. He’s giving me IDEAS! I am so absorbed in this – I’ll have to check out the 1962 water tower/atomic clock experiment he refers to – that I have two choices: get up, embrace the night, follow this physics problem to its conclusion, OR try a chemical aid.

I have several choices: Advil PM or prescription Lunesta. I have to make this decision quickly because any later, and I’ll be stuck and groggy in the morning. I go with my latest experiment, that ZzzQuil generic.

1 a.m. I’m definitely drowsy, but now my restless legs are awake in bed. My head has moved off clocks and is back with Nicci French and who did it? I have learned that there is no relation between physical exhaustion and falling asleep. Either the toggle switch toggles to “sleep” or it doesn’t. I’d gone for a hike today, been outside, drank my warm milk, done all the right things to promote “feeling tired.” No dice.

3 a.m. I am really, really trying not to fret about the clocks and gravity. I think maybe if I browse a Good Housekeeping magazine, it will be brief (short articles), not intellectually exciting, and not scary. I lie in bed.

4 a.m. I decide to get up and go out to the couch so my reading won’t disturb Tim. As I cruise around getting a blanket, Tim emerges: “What’s going on?” and scares the shit out of me. Now I’m wide awake with adrenalin pumping and might as well finish the Nicci French book. Maybe once the mystery is resolved, I can relax and fall asleep.

6 a.m. I think that works; I may have dozed off for a while. Tim says goodbye. I get the newspaper.

8 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. I may have lost some time there because I’m aware of waking up to look at the clock (which is at sea level). I feel queasy and fogged. This is not going to be one of those smooth round-the-clock days. This is going to be a mess. I miss a 10:30 gathering.

I compensate by cleaning the stove, sink, and cabinets and Googling the water tower clock experiment and Einstein’s time dilation.

Relativity question: Is my Third Third going to be longer than my previous thirds because I spend more of it awake? Is my clock running slower? Or is that just a foggy question from a sleep-deprived fool?

In Praise of the Jigsaw Puzzle

There are two ways to pursue a jigsaw puzzle. You can be intentional about it, maybe even plan to do it with a group of friends, and then it’s social and part of a good time. I know friends who do a new one every New Year’s Eve. You can also back into doing a puzzle because you’re in task avoidance mode and feel like all you can manage is wasting time, but you need distraction that’s engrossing and enjoyable enough so you can avoid noticing how much you’re avoiding. The puzzle is a cut above empty-headedness and self-medication, but in your mind not as bad as … playing solitaire, for example.

Everyone has his or her personal prejudices as to what constitutes really degenerate time wasting. To me, playing online games probably takes the cake, but I’m sure there are some people who think it helps their reflexes or memory or whatever. Everyone’s poison – or antidote, I guess – is different.

I like a good jigsaw puzzle. It meets all the requirements for absorbing one’s attention without requiring any preparation, knowledge, or brain sweat. You pull out the box and before you know it, you’ve abdicated any responsibility for completing any chores. You’re gone.

In our house, the jigsaw puzzle goes on the dining room table so doing one also means you’ve disrupted dinner times. Maybe that means you don’t really cook dinner. You say, “Everyone for himself,” and go back to the puzzle.

Recently, a friend and I have been comparing what our brain does on jigsaw puzzles. We both notice how we can pick up a piece and “sense” where it goes. We don’t know if it’s a response to the shape or the picture, but we know it happens without too many synapses jumping. Something in us just responds to the piece, knows its place in the puzzle. It’s very gratifying.

I’m sure the solitaire players say that solitaire does something for their brains, too.

But this being our Third Thirds, I’ve had to modify my jigsaw puzzling. Those big 1,000-piece ones take up too much space on the table so I have to lean way over. After a couple hours, I begin to notice the lower back fading. An hour more, and a spasm might begin. If I don’t quit – but how can I quit when I’ve just made so much progress on the sky?? – I can be stuck with a heating pad for the next couple of days. I’ll walk by the table, reach for a piece, and feel a jab as I lean out. And I keep leaning out, unable to stop puzzling the puzzle.

Recently, I’ve discovered smaller-piece puzzles (the pieces themselves are reduced size). And I’ve tried 500-count puzzles instead of the big 1,000s. That means the whole puzzle doesn’t take up the whole table. I can do it sitting down. Once we even found a four-sided puzzle so everyone could work on it from his or her own side of the table.

I get my puzzles at the local thrift store. It’s a little chancy because they might be missing pieces, but folks are getting pretty sophisticated and write on the bottom whether it’s complete or not. When I finish a puzzle, I pass it on to Judith. She gives me hers, and when we’re both done, it goes back to the thrift store.

I anthropomorphize the pieces. I look for a stubby head with a fat right hand. I look for a skinny neck with a sloping shoulder. After working on a puzzle for a few hours, the Zen of it takes over. Then I just hover over the pieces and the right ones start to jump into my hand. Yes, it happens, and that’s the thrill of the whole undertaking. The universe is lining itself up, putting all its pieces in place. (sigh)

When I was in college, I worked a summer job on the assembly line at the Aurora Plastics factory. We assembled plastic models: planes, cars, monsters. Occasionally, we’d drop one, pick up a few pieces, put them in the closest box – any box – and keep the line moving. At the end, the box would get shrink-wrapped, and some poor kid would think that meant his model would have all the requisite pieces.

What if a jigsaw puzzle came off an assembly line like that? You’d be trying to fit houses into landscapes into general stores into street scenes, and you’d be tearing your hair out. But I don’t think that puzzle would show up in a thrift store. I think that puzzle would end up in the trash. My universe is safe.

Speed zone ahead

Sometimes I’m fast and sometimes I’m slow. Sometimes I want to get where I’m going and teleporting would be preferable. When I’m in the corridors of an office building on my way to somewhere and a person in front of me is ambling along, I feel something like corridor rage. I try to pass, but she’s just poking down the center of the hallway. This just pops my cork (even if I’m not on the way to a restroom). Why take so much time getting from here to there? I also get incredibly aggravated when I’m on a food line and the person in front of me waits till they’re at the front of the line to decide what kind of pizza they might want. #!x*/%

Other times, I just want to amble along myself, and the world is too speedy for me. I really liked cross-country skiing when it was ski touring and the trails wound in and out of trees. Then someone invented skate skiing and everything became a workout session, with skiers zipping by on newly-widened trails so there was room for their flying skis. Yes, I’m a runner, but when I hike, I like to walk slowly enough for conversation, for looking, for inspecting.

I like public transit because you can only get there as fast as the schedule allows. It enforces a slower pace to one’s life. My bicycle does the same thing: it’s a one-speed with coaster brakes. I didn’t like fussing with gears and I like my bike riding slow (for conversation, for looking, for inspecting). That bike has taken me through triathlons, but the goal was always finishing, not finishing fast.

On the other hand, I have to squash down my impatience when other people’s decision-making seems unenduringly slow, when something can be done smoothly and efficiently but the person seems intent on dawdling and plodding. (We used to come back from a particular post office complaining about “no sense of urgency.”) Maybe the other person is just not alert to what’s going on, but it expresses itself as slowness. Meanwhile, my speedy electrons are piling up in collisions inside me. For years, Sophie thought we played a game at K-Mart: leaving the cart because the checkout line was so slow, I’d get fed up and leave.

Yes, this is a checkered, self-centered reaction to speed: when I want fast, you’d better be fast; when I want slow, don’t rush me. But then I found a wonderful collection of thoughts by Doris Grumbach as she approached her 100th year. She’d seen an article in the Wall Street Journal about Audubon Day at the Louisiana State University’s Memorial Library. A librarian stood in front of a beautiful, open page of Audubon’s Birds of America for several minutes: ‘Very slowly she turned to the next page. A small audience of awed spectators watched. What was most impressive about the description of the activity was the newspaper’s headline: “The Joys of Slow Looking.”’

“The Joys of Slow Looking”

I like it. You can’t look slowly if you’re moving fast or in a rush. You can’t look slowly if you have to be somewhere else. You can’t even look slowly if you’re even thinking about the somewheres else you have to be or do. Slow looking requires looking, not spacing out and staring.

Lots of books and magazines tell me to Be Present in the moment, but when I remind myself, I get all knotted up with runaway thoughts and frantically try to rein them in. But telling myself to “look slowly”? That seems more accessible. It helps me stop because I have to look. To look, not to glance or peek. To look outside my head, not in.

I’m going to try this. The Joys of Slow Looking await.