The Never Ending Things to Do....

The never ending list of things to do before you get to do what you want to do. Yikes. Like the other day with the lawnmower. I was going to mow for the first time since I got back from Peru. I knew I'd be out of gas and wasn't sure about oil, so I cleverly got both before I even looked at the mower. I put them in, mowed, and 20 minutes later the thing stopped. I cleaned it up a little, then Italo began taking it apart. I cleaned the air filter while he did his stuff. Then it worked. Then it stopped. Then I drove 20 miles round trip to get a new spark plug. Now she's working well. But in part of the lawn I was mowing a recent storm had brought down a 30 foot branch, so I had to spend half an hour cleaning up the debris before I cold mow.
      Total mowing time that day: 1 hour.
      Total time involved with the mower and debris clean up: 4 hours.
So six hours for one hour of doing what I wanted to do.
      Dinner last night was similarly rankling. Italo asked for chicken parmesan. Clever me, I took a couple of checks Madeleina remembered she was holding for me from my time in Peru, to the bank early in the day and decided to get the shopping done for the day too. Since I went to the store to go to the bank, shopping counted as essentially zero time.
      I got home and decided to get Boots' chicken in the oven early so that the oven would be ready for the parmesan later. Clever me. I washed Boots' the blind Wonderdog's  chicken then remembered that I'd used the biggest roasting pan the previous night and hadn't put away the left overs. So I did that, then scrubbed the pan, then started the chicken.
     The problem came when I went to get the chicken breasts I knew I had in the fridge: Turns out I only had one half of one. Oh, and the tomatoes I was going to use for the sauce were soft. And the parmesan I was going to use in the breading was not grated fine enough for breading. So I did a 20 mile round trip and got that stuff. Now I was set.
     I cut the chicken fairly thin and scrubbed the cutting board. I went to put the garlic in the pan to start the tomato sauce and realized I didn't have enough cut and sitting in olive oil. So I cut garlic. Then I cut onions and tomatoes and got that going. Then I got out my flour, made my breading and went for the eggs. Oops. Forgot that Italo and his daughter had eaten the last of them. No sweat. Another 20 mile round trip and I had my good natural extra-large babies and by the time I got back the sauce was doing fine.
     Then I breaded and sauteed the chicken till golden brown, put the pieces in two baking dishes, topped them with a bit of parmesan then set it aside for when Italo would be ready to eat. When he was I put the sauce on the chicken, topped with mozzarella and baked.
     Total time cooking, cutting, cleaning up: 1 hour.
     Total time getting things ready and repeat time to go to the store: 3 hours.
Damn, I hate losing the time to the never ending things you need to do to prepare for the things you want to do.