Time and Timing

I wish I could know, even approximately, how long something will take me. I mean, roughly, I know it takes me about an hour get up, go to the bathroom, and get dressed. Throw a shower in there an it can become an hour and 15 minutes. This, however, assumes I have home care helping me. If I am doing it on my own, it can take anywhere from one to two hours, depending on what difficulties I encounter.

Difficulties? One of the most most common issues when I dress my self is having to go pee halfway through. With Home Care, they pass my jug and ensure things go well. On my own, it's a hit and miss proposition. Try laying on your back, closing your eyes, and peeing into a small mouth jug. Let me know how it goes. For the women out there, this is impossible. I wonder how they deal with it. For me, it usually means dressing all over again in a second pair of clothes.

So I I have to be up for something at a give time, I have two choices. I can get up when home care is here to help, or I can get up on my own, but I have to allow a couple of hours in the process. Most days, Home Care wins. Dressing with help is easier and faster. Dressing alone is exhausting and tiring. Still, some days, like today, I want to sleep in a bit. Last night was a very bad night for sleep, or a very good night for not sleeping, depending on your point of view. When Micheal arrived at 9:00 AM, I wanted to sleep a couple or three more hours. He agreed, especially after he saw me. I was up-beat, but he could tell right away that I was very tired.

This problem is that I had ribs to get into the oven by noon. So, I slept until 11:00 AM, thinking I could get done a bit before noon and still be close enough. Alas, things did not go this way. I was dressed by the crack of noon; not ready to cook, just dressed. Still, I can do this, right? So, once able, the first thing I did was get the ribs grilling, in preparation for slow cooking. I do them that way, searing the outside then cooking them with beans and BBQ sauce in the slow cooker.

Then, of course, there are the onions and a bell pepper to chop. Thank goodness for my Starfrit Onion Chopper. This little gadget makes things faster and easier for me, for anyone for that matter. So I got the ribs started, chopped the onions and peppers, took the ribs from the oven and put them in the slow cooker, then added baked beans, onions and peppers, and BBQ Sauce over top of it all.

This seems simply enough as I describe it, yet it took me a full hour to do these simple tasks as well. So my noon target became 1:00 PM. Dinner will be a bit late. Now all I have to do is get the Spanish Rice ready at the right time. What time is that?