Self-care checklist

Things I didn’t have time for yesterday, due to parenthood:

• the “All Ten” puzzle
• the NYT “Connections” puzzle
• the (NYT) Athletic “Connections: Sports Edition” puzzle

(I don’t “Wordle.”)

• showering
• reading
• posting

Once the children had started dropping off to sleep, I drafted a tedious account of the night’s culinary failure. But I couldn’t bring myself to post it. Even my banality has limits.

I slept well for a change. I awakened with time to spare, and now I’m posting first thing this morning. Or, rather, sixth thing. The routine must be maintained, or the ship goes to pieces.

That’s not true.

About those Internet puzzles. When you solve one, you want to solve another. Then another. Then you start looking around for other puzzles. It could go on indefinitely. When the urge is very strong, I give myself the equivalent of a cold shower: I take the “Agatha Christie Novels” quiz. And if that doesn’t cure me, I do a crossword. That usually tires me out.

Well, I must stop now. We just opened a bill for $888, for an emergency-room procedure that took 20 seconds and, due to insurance, should have cost $0. I must make a call.

Mowing; puzzling; sketching; x-raying

Earlier today: a difficult mowing, with dull blades, in the August heat.

I haven’t entirely recovered.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel has been learning the parts of speech. He discourses on pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions. His interest was sparked by Mad Lib-type activities.

He also likes crosswords. He doesn’t solve them himself. He forces his parents to fill them in. It’d been years since I’d done any. This week, I filled in four.

I see how a person could get addicted to doing crosswords. Each correct answer lets in a brief flood of dopamine.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

“Say a ‘A’,” Daniel requests – he means write or draw, not say – and I draw an “A” upon the screen of the children’s Etch A Sketch Doodle. It delights him. He gets his dopamine hit.

“Say a ‘B’,” he says.

And so on. “Say ‘Mercury’. Say ‘Venus’. … ”

Samuel takes the device and draws two thick parallel lines. “I made an x-ray of my legs,” he says.