January 31, 2026
Time contracts during the wee hours of the night. Slim minutes prance into a ravenous maw, whence they return not. The mind’s chronometer begins to wander as deft fingers fluff every carnation, deleaf every cremon, recut every spray rose.
Because, like, *Raskolnikov* might have whiled away his life simply staring at peeling yellow wallpaper — but some of us can’t justify such lollygagging. After all, the twelfth-grade “anchor feast” was mere hours away, but the event’s Crime-and-Punishment-themed floral cake was not going to arrange itself.
But, of course, I’m being glib. That fatalistic assessment of time — that the minutes disappear without a trace — applies to much more than simply this bizarre, yellowy floral event. After all, it’s not as though minutes disappear only in the dead of night, when flowers come out to play. In fact, reflecting on the last ten months, it’s difficult to identify a day in which the minutes didn’t disappear. They just never accommodate all the things I’d like to do.
Put simply: Time contracts during every part of life with four kids — and it takes a monumental effort to hold on to each moment before it’s gone.