Time on my mind

After the morning I had, it's a wonder I ever get anything done at all...
I spent two hours making a picnic lunch.  (Two hours?!)  This lunch consisted of:
egg salad
cucumber slices vinaigrette
oven-baked potatoes

Mmm, yummy potatoes.




So, at the end of this two-hour kitchen-based black hole, I stopped to assess what it is that made a simple lunch take so darn long.  Was it the ADD-brain going into hyperfocus?  I don't recall being so "in the zone" while I was cooking that I lost track of time.

Was it mission-creep?  This is my perennial problem with sewing: I start one project, get excited about a related sewing project, and end up splitting my time and attention among two or more projects as a result (thus, the four 3 sleeve-related alterations I have going on simultaneously).  Okay, so there was a little mission-creep here: the only dish I was going to make was the egg salad; while looking for some veggies to put in it, I discovered the cucumber looking sad and figured this was its last day.  Also, the potatoes were a late addition.  *But* I stopped myself from adding a pepper-based dish to the mix.  By the time I was thinking about chopping up the peppers, I realized how late it was getting, and consciously decided not to go there.

And...
there was quite a bit of plain, old-fashioned multi-tasking at work in making this a 2-hour ordeal.  Our brains are not suited to multi-tasking.  My brain especially is not served by being split among activities, and yet I get so scattered in my thinking that I end up flitting ineffectively between household activities on a regular basis.  So, along with the cooking, I did a load of laundry (and threw half of it in the dryer and hung up the other half to dry).  I unloaded the dishwasher.  I checked email.  I made myself breakfast and ate it.

Oh well.  The picnic lunch was very tasty.