Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

The Prompt: What do you wish you had more time to do each day?

Oh, this is easy – I would  like more time to talk with Ledcat.

Our morning conversations are usually a series of short grunts, mumbles, reminders as she gets ready to leave for work and I try to get ready to do some work from home. Neither of us is a morning person so we are typically one cat-vomit incident away from a grumpy verbal skirmish before she leaves for the day.

When she comes home, we typically watch the news while we eat dinner (or prepare and eat dinner.) The news is important to both of us, for our professional lives and our personal interest. We do talk during the news, but usually about the news itself.

After dinner and dishes, there’s another round of pet stuff and chores and so forth. We both need some personal time to decompress before bed – she likes to unwind with music and read in a brightly lit room. I like quiet and a dim room. We also now have a dog who can’t climb the stairs so I feel terribly guilty going upstairs to hang with her and leaving him alone for 12 hours or more.

I actually look forward to the weeknights when we have to go to either Walgreens or Target or Petco for some errand. They are located very close to a Starbucks, so we’ll take care of the errand and walk over to have a drink. That gives us a chance to sit and talk about whatever. We can’t hear the cat knocking over the food dish or the dog eating the now scattered cat food. We can’t hear the retching sounds. We can’t change the laundry. The newspaper isn’t tempting us with its crisp unread pages. We have no control of the music or the video or any of that. It’s just us, tasty drinks and a usually festive or fun atmosphere.

At home, we do try to make time for conversation. I’ll put on the kettle, turn off the tv and close the laptop lid. But it’s so easy to get distracted.  By what? We don’t much tv during the week – just a 10 PM show on Tues and Weds. We don’t have a DVR or anything like that. How do we let the washing machine take precedence over our conversations?

What do we talk about? The news, politics and current events of course. Our days. Our hopes & dreams. Our feelings! Just stuff. Same stuff you talk about, different flavor.

I think one more hour in the day would do it. It’s not like we don’t communicate, it’s just that we don’t have time to have real conversations without planning or escaping. Tonight, for example, we are going to a City Theatre play so we’ll have a rushed dinner. She has to work in the early AM so we’ll get home at 10:30ish and go right to bed. Tomorrow, she works then we are heading to Handmade Arcade for holiday shopping then rushing home to take care of the animals. She heads to dinner with friends while I go on to help set up Bingo, then we meet up at Bingo where we will be with a group of 10 people and I have to take photos for my work so we won’t have actual conversation until we are driving home at 10:30 if we an even pull off being in the same car.

But we are blessed to have these opportunities to attend events and be with our friends and support the causes we believe in. We are blessed to have our pets and our home and our washing machine because if we were in a rented apartment relying on a laundromat with no critters, we wouldn’t have more time would we?