Taking Steps

          When my parents separated, and ultimately divorced, I suddenly found myself no longer in Arlington, VA with my friends, dog Tammy, and cat Mosby, but living in Tulsa, Oklahoma with my grandparents.

          We’d stayed there in past summers, so I was well acquainted with my Uncle Sam’s old cache of Pogo books, tucked away in a cupboard under the eaves. But this was for the long haul, with no apparent end date.

          Fortunately, my family were readers and so was I. My mother’s attitude was that all reading, even if it was the back of a Kleenex box, was fine, so I had free rein of the books in his old room, most published in the ‘30s and ‘40s. My Uncle had at one point been bed-bound with polio, so there was plenty to pick from.

          I worked my way through, among others, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Thurber Carnival, Bill Maudlin’s book of WWII cartoons, The Egg and I, Gone with the Wind, and even Andersonville. I enjoyed them all even if at 11 years old it’s certain that I missed many of the references and most of the nuances, but they got me through a long summer.

  

        One of my favorites was Cheaper by the Dozen, an autobiography written by two children of efficiency experts Frank and Lillian Galbraith, pioneers in industrial engineering who tried to apply the same principles to their family of twelve kids.  

          It was when my knee (which is still deciding day-to-day whether it will cooperate) was at its worst that I was reminded of the Galbraiths.

          I became my own efficiency expert.

How much could I carry in one trip? Phone can go in pocket, book under arm, reading glasses on head, plate in left hand, tea mug in right. And the odds were better if this occurred after the mug was empty.

          Did I reeealy need that loaf of bread all the way downstairs in the freezer?

          And why walk the four steps around the couch that it would take to turn up the thermostat when I could use the Nest app on my phone?