Eleven Minutes for Two Earrings

August thirtieth. I want to be clear that I had a plan this morning. The plan was: get up, make coffee, get dressed without incident, leave the apartment in a normal amount of time. I had what I'd wear already decided the night before, which I do maybe four times a year, and I had thought of it as an advantage.

The earrings were not part of my plan's risk assessment. They are small gold hoops that I have put in approximately three hundred times without thinking about it. This morning they apparently required my full and undivided attention, a brief search-and-rescue operation involving the dresser top and the edge of the ceramic dish and one very suspenseful moment where I was convinced I'd already knocked the second one into the bathroom drain, which has not happened and I would like to keep it that way.

the earring is somewhere. probably.

Eleven minutes. I timed it because at some point I had to know. I stood at that mirror for eleven actual minutes to complete a task that has never taken me more than forty-five seconds. The concentrate face I apparently make while inserting an earring, I didn't know I made that face, is not a face I would like to be making repeatedly in a mirror while I am already running slightly late. Good to have documentation.

eleven minutes. it took eleven minutes.

I left on time. Barely. The earrings are in. The cord is on the windowsill and Gerald has a new leaf coming in on the kitchen side and I did not have breakfast because the earring situation used the breakfast window. There is probably a lesson here about five more minutes and how it compounds. I'm choosing not to learn it today.