Wed – Good Morning Stress or Math is My Friend

So far on this vacation, we haven’t had a lot of deadlines. The flight we had to make was one. We left early to counter any border problems or traffic problems or problem problems.

Of course nothing went wrong and so we sat in the airport for a good 3 hours. Even the long line at the border (according to the website) was only ½ as long. And that included a pretty thorough inspection of our paperwork (to allow the boys to cross the border.)

So today, after not being able to get on the tour to see all the Asian animals on safari yesterday, we had booked the ride for 11:00. We had to be there at 10:50.

10:50, the ticket dude said. “Seriously. 10:50.”

Now, had this just been the Prettiest-girl-in-the world and I, hey, no problem. But we had the agents of chaos and destruction to contend with so…

I did the math. It will about ½ hr to get there. There’s parking we need to find. We need to walk there to the safari starting point. And, hey, it takes the boys a little longer to get into the car and there’s always the possibility of something like the youngest deciding today he would press all the buttons on the elevator. So, let’s say we had to leave by 10:00.

Now, there was no way we could say we need to leave by 10:00. If we were lucky, we’d be out about 10:15, short of dragging them around by the ears.

So we told them 9:45. Shhhh. Don’t ever tell them our secret. But realistically, that would mean we’re out of the room by 10:00.

So, doing the math, going backwards from 10, we need 40 min to eat at the restaurant in the hotel. Everyone could be done in 30, but the youngest loves to stare at his food a lot before eating it. So, yeah, if we are on him, we’ll likely get done in 40. Say 5 min to get there and back.

That means we’ll have to get dressed by 9:10. Getting dressed can either take as long as 3 min. Yes, I’ve timed it. Or it can take as long as, well, forever and ever and ever and ever.

And then there’s showers and hair-blowing and braces cleaning and all of that.

8:00 I figured. If we get up at 8, we may just have a chance.

As I wrote this, it was 8:34.

I gave 50/50.