Dear Kid,

It’s Saturday. It should be a day of rest and relaxation and other fun “r” words.

But as I look at my To Do List (note that it doesn’t start with an “r”), I seem to have approximately 83 hours worth of tasks to fit into today.

And that doesn’t even include lunch.

It is going to be a crowded day.

I gave serious consideration to how to multi-task. After half a cup of coffee I decided that showering while typing a blog is probably a bad idea.

I gave serious consideration to delegation. Pi has left for most of the day, the Puppy is curled up sleeping, and Dad is eager to help. Dishwasher loading delegated. Now I’m down to 82.5 hours worth of To Dos.

To be fair, he offered to help with other things. The problem is that the other things are either already on his list or would take me longer to explain (and possibly re-do) than it would take just to do in the first place.

Just to be clear, no, you may not delegate studying for your classes.

Have a fab day, kiddo. Stay warm.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Grandma is in the hospital for a few days. Knowing her, this is not easy since they expect you to rest and relax and follow their rules when you’re in the hospital.

Grandma is not known for resting and relaxing on someone else’s schedule.

So being the kind of kid I am, I turned to My Friend the Internet for ideas on how to entertain oneself when one is supposed to be Taking It Easy rather than scaling mountains.

And MFTI let me down. In a big way.

Oh, there were ideas. They were just 17 kinds of awful. Maybe 18.

So I turned to The People of Facebook for ideas, and TPoF did not let me down. (Thank you FB friends!)

In no particular order, here are

• Books, audio books, Kindle books
• Movies
• Knitting
• Adult coloring books (‘Adult’ as in ‘for grown ups’ not as in ‘XXX’)
• Sudoku and crosswords
• Magazines
• Play soothing spa music in your room so the nurses hang out there
• Organize photos for albums (which sounds like work to me)
• Investigate the family tree through Ancestry.com

Nobody mentioned “Talk to the nurses about your grandchildren” or “Tell the medical staff about DearKidLoveMom.com”; clearly an oversight.

Of all the great suggestions, my all-time fave was (wait for it): Bring her some scrap metal and an arc welder. (Yep, I am still giggling too.)

Mostly, I hope she’ll relax, rest, recover, and head home soon. Those would be good things to add to a hospital to-do list.

Love, Mom