If it's Tuesday, it must be ballet, right? And if it's close to 7:30 pm on Tuesday evening, you must be sitting in a community centre parking lot, spinning your wheels, waiting for your tutu-ed lovely to finish chatting with her fellow ballerinas, put on her gear and grace you with an end-of-class appearance.
And so you wait. And wait.
And you curse the waste of your precious time. After all, these are 10- and 12-minute chunks of your life that you will never get back. Surely they can be put to better use than massaging your cuticles and reading the fine print on your latest speeding ticket.
In fact, they can. You can come prepared with all kinds of productive pastimes for these little windows of opportunity. Here are some ideas for whiling away your waiting.
• Clean the car. Keep a supply of grocery-store bags in your glove compartment, and take advantage of this lag to pick up the myriad Happy Meal toys, discarded flyers, French fries and gum wrappers. Assign one bag "keep," for transporting the mittens and there-since-Friday balled-up swimsuits and towels into the house. And then ditch the “trash” bag in your garbage bin on your way past the garage.
• Work on your knitting/macramé/crocheting/basket-weaving. Always throw your latest project into a craft bag before leaving the house, just in case you encounter some valuable dead time that can be put to use adding yet more rows to that interminable scarf.
• Read a newspaper, magazine or book. Or get a book on tape and have your cassette player read it to you. If you're really feeling ambitious, you can even put the time to some scholarly use, and learn a language on tape.
• Make a shopping list or plan the week's menu. Instead of racing around to get it all together before a harried trip to the store, keep a running inventory of necessities and meal ideas on one of those stuck-to-the-dash pads. That way, it's all in front of you when you do get an opportunity to dash into the supermarket.
• Play with your kids' toys. Who says GameBoys are just for the junior members of your family? Or, if your van is so equipped, exchange the Spongebob DVD in your player for something less animated, and slip into the back seat to enjoy it.
• Paint your nails. Why not? You've got the nail polish (provided you've remembered to pack it in the glove compartment). And you've got the nails (which, conveniently, share space with the time on the hands).
• Enjoy the silence. Instead of fretting about your daughter's dilly-dallying, soak up the peaceful nothingness. These moments don't come around much in the life of a busy mom. Take advantage of them when they do.
