Things I can do on a Sunday afternoon while waiting for my children to return:

• Read the Sunday paper pre-trampling.
• Put away the laundry (finally).
• Remove stained and outgrown clothing items from children’s wardrobes and bury the evidence.
• Eat Doritos for lunch.
• Finish reading the novel I started yesterday.
• Marvel a little bit about how much I’ve missed devouring a book, uninterrupted, like that.
• Make travel plans.
• Make lists of things to do in preparation for said travel.
• Admire how clean the kids’ rooms are.
• Do more laundry.
• Pay bills and balance my checkbook.
• Use vulgar language in reference to my checkbook.
• Watch the Olympics. When my interest flags, amuse my ignorant American self by trying to pronounce the foreign Olympians’ names.
• Check the clock… three or four hundred times.