Our beaker is extremely full. Adult time is so important that it should be a large rock. In reality, it is somewhere between gravel and sand. The boulders that take top priority don’t just make time something that we have to use whenever it is available, they complicate space availability. In other words, if we want adult time, and we do, we have to be constantly aware of opportunities for time and location, irregardless of the unconventionality of the time and location. Quantity exists only because we are flexible about times. And locations.

Soooo, these nontraditional time and location choices frequently lead to unexpected consequences. The best, albeit unplanned result is laughter and we do get to laugh at ourselves a LOT. On the other hand, every so often adult time results in injuries. Don’t get me wrong, the injuries are accidental and invariably hilarious, but they just aren’t as much fun as laughter without the pulled muscles and, well, the black eye.

We have two very large dogs whose primary household job seems to be maintaining watch over the family members. The fact that we can successfully hide from the children, but not the dogs is a topic for another post, but a fact nonetheless. Large dogs are surprisingly stealthy, especially when you are distracted by the companionship of another adult. We have several pocket doors in our house. If you lean on a pocket door, it acts more like a pocket flap and makes a frighteningly loud noise. Large dogs who have quietly found their way to that pocket door only to discover that their people are on the other side of a pocket door, will make a sudden and unexpected noise that causes grown adults to demonstrate the Moro reflex.

I.e., the dog bulldozed through a door and Doug punched me in the face.

Then, we laughed so hard we cried.