Poof!  The magic wish granting fairy has just descended down after showing little bunny fofo who is boss and has given me twenty minutes to do whatever I want.  It’s an extra bonus 20 minutes outside of the normal space/time continuum and I can use it however I please.  The task is daunting.  I have so much I want to do with every spare minute.

Option 1a: Write.  I always want to write.  But I can only use the 20 minutes to write if it’s a quiet time in the house.  I can’t write during work hours, because that would be unethical.  I can’t write when my daughter is awake, because those hours with her are precious and few.  Often I can’t write when she is asleep because other demands pull on me: work, feeding the cats, cleaning the house, laundry, or spending time with my husband.  I have to give up all those “shoulds” to give myself twenty minutes of writing.  Since we are outside of normal time demands, maybe this time I can write.

Option 1b: Write my book.  Oh, but write on the blog or the book?  The blog is fresh and new and fun and exciting.  The book is another child that needs me and my blood and sweat, but I dream about him.  I ponder where he is going and what he is up to when I’ve been away for too long.  I’m afraid he’s forgotten me, or worse that I’ve forgotten him in the shiny new blog toy or in the mundane daily life.  The story is racing toward the final conflict (if something can race at 4000 words a month) and I need to finish.  I want to finish, but somehow I need pristine time for the novel.  He can’t be interrupted by familial needs or distractions.  He needs a closed door and time to immerse myself in his world.  Is twenty minutes enough to give to that hungry offspring, or am I better off spending it with Afthead?

Option 2: Yoga.  Oh, I like yoga.  It stretches out my shoulders from my ears and releases my arms from their endless keyboard dance.  I have found a new yoga website I like, YogaGlo, so I can yoga whenever I want.  No more excuses about going somewhere.  But I’d have to change my clothes and find a mat and the props and log into the site and oh no.  Twenty minutes gone and I didn’t get to do yoga.  I only got to prep for yoga.

Option 3: Run! I can run in 20 minutes.  I can get dressed and out the door in five minutes tops.  I can race up and down the hills of my neighborhood and watch the arrival of spring: beautiful flowers showered with cascading petals from blooming trees.   Branches in the sky look fuzzily green with new buds.  Running clears my mind and rejuvenates my spirit.  Everyone in the family is happier when mom gets to run.  Oh, but it’s dark and I’m home alone with my daughter.  Running would be like child abuse.  One does not leave one’s sleeping 6 year old for a 15 minute run.

Option 4: Knit.  I can get a couple of rows done on my sweater that I was going to finish this winter.  (Missed that goal.)  I can go play with the pretty scarf I started at Mardi Gras.  The rainbow colors are so fun and tempting.  Maybe I should whip up something for the baby cousin that was just born.  I could get a good start on a baby hat in 20 minutes.  Oh, the scrap blanket with the stripes of leftover project yarn that makes me so happy as I run my fingers over it’s ridges.  I could knit, but I won’t.

Option 5: Read.  Reading often takes up my spare 20 minutes.  I’m reading “Jennifer Government” which is a cute little book that I’m enjoying.  It isn’t the awesome books I’ve read lately: “The Bees,” “The Husband’s Secret,” “The Scorpio Races,” “Big Little Lies,” “The Blue Journal,” and oh the list goes on and on.  I am in a book reading streak right now that makes me so happy!  There is so much amazing fiction out there and I’m finding it over and over.  I should just finish up “Jennifer Government” and move on.  I wonder what’s up with her barcode tattoo.

Did I use commas and quotation marks and colons the right way in that last paragraph?  Crud.  Punctuation is so hard.  That and grammar are going to be the downfall of my writing career.

Oh yeah, writing.  This was fun.  I enjoyed my twenty minutes and covered a lot of things.  It’s nice to have my list ready for when that fairy shows up.  I wonder if she’ll be little like the tooth fairy, or big like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz.  Wait, was Glinda a fairy or a witch?  She had a wand, so I’m certain she could grant my wish,so I guess it doesn’t really matter.  When the time comes though, I’ll just say, “Hold on a second fairy/witch” and I’ll pull up my blog, look at my list, and evaluate my options.  I’ve already done Option 1, so next time I’ll have to move on to something else.  Maybe yoga.  Ommmmmmm.