A Silver Photo Frame on Our Porch Ended My Fifteen Year Blind Spot
I sat at the desk in the den, the desk lamp casting a sharp circle of yellow light across the green blotter.
In front of me lay the weekly planner with the cracked leather spine, its pages blank for the coming month.
I had my black pen in hand, my fingers dry from the autumn air.
I began by writing down the daily bus schedule, seven-forty in the morning and three-fifteen in the afternoon.
Underneath those entry points, I blocked out the grocery shopping for Tuesday evenings at seven.
I wrote down the laundry schedule, light clothes on Wednesday nights and dark clothes on Thursday nights.
I calculated the time it took to vacuum the stairs, to clean the bathrooms, and to prep the school lunches for the following day.
Each task received a specific time slot, a neat box of ink on the cream-colored paper.
My career at Mid-Valley Tech had been built on this kind of systems analysis, on finding inefficiencies and correcting them.
Now, I was applying the same logic to the house, mapping out the domestic labor that I had ignored for fifteen years.
