Where Does the Time Go?

It sounds to me like Uncle Ken doesn't sleep much, and that may be why he has more time than I do. I usually go to sleep around 1:00 AM and get up around 9:00 AM. I might lose an hour or so going to the bathroom and putting wood in the stove a couple times a night. I am usually hungry when I wake up, but I'm not ready to deal with ham and eggs yet, so I have a bowl of cold cereal to tithe me over. Then I have these back exercises that I need to do. I have a chronic back problem for which there is no cure. The best I can do is keep it as flexible as possible to delay the process of degeneration. Once I lose something, it's gone forever, so I try to hang on to what's left. The exercises only take 15 minutes or so, but I am supposed to sit in a comfortable chair afterwards for another 15 minutes or so. While I'm sitting there, I turn on the Weather Channel and promptly fall asleep for at least a half hour, more on a rainy day.

After that, I get dressed and get ready for my regular breakfast. But before that, I go out into the garage on alternate days and make cigarettes. That takes about a half hour and, on the days that I don't make them, I still go out into the garage to smoke one, which takes about 15 minutes in itself. Come to think of it, that's probably where a lot of my time goes. Since I stopped smoking in the house 10 years ago, every time I go into the garage for a cigarette, it's 15 minutes out of my life. At 15 cigarettes a day, that's over three hours. I do some multitasking with that, though, like reading the newspaper and drinking my two beers a day, but most of it is just chalked up to break time. I stopped smoking  few days ago because it was aggravating my flu symptoms. I thought that would free up some time for me, but I still take as many breaks, only in the living room recliner instead of the lawn chair in the garage. Did I mention that I do all my sleeping in that recliner because it's better for my back than a bed? I'm tired all the time with this flu thing so I tend to fall asleep as soon as my ass hits the seat. No time saved there.

After breakfast, I clear the table and wash the dishes that have accumulated in the previous 24 hours. My hypothetical wife has health issues of her own, so I took over the dishes when I quit working in 2004. She still does most of the cooking, but I do a lot of grilling in the summer, which doesn't take any time because I set the grill up outside the garage door and do some of my smoking and drinking while I keep an eye on it. On a good day, I might get an hour or so to work on my own projects before it's time to watch the evening news while I eat a snack before doing my thing in the garage. We watch TV, more often than not a DVD of an old show we like, while we eat supper. Then it's off to the computer for me till it's time to eat ice cream and go to sleep. And so it goes.