Hours to kill, hats to wear

This is actually a post from The Wiz. Blogger apparantly doesn't like her computer, so I'm posting this for her. Allison, one of my dear friends whom I've never met, (ah, the beauties of blogs) started a threadjack and suggested a post about productive waiting time. And since it's a good topic, and since I'm too lazy to come up with a topic of my own, I thought I would post about it. As far as I can tell, she has an 8 yo, a 5 yo, and a toddler, and often finds herself waiting for one of the older two to finish an activity, and has an hour to kill here and there. Her problem? She's not quite sure how to make that hour productive. (Am I getting this right, Allison?) I personally find that having a nail file handy will keep me busy for hours, but then, I'm easily entertained. My mom brings knitting with her, and her down time results in just a little more of a sweater coming into the world. Hmmm.....the possibility of a toddler strangling himself and/or stabbing random things with knitting needles makes that one less than appealing at this stage of Mommyhood. She says she sometimes runs small errands like to the post office or dry cleaners, but she just doesn't have errands like that very often. Hello! Allison! you just answered your own question! Clearly, the answer is: be less organized. Make sure you have lots of random errands throughout the day. For example, forget a few things off of your grocery list when you shop. Then, when you have an hour to kill, go pick up that gallon of milk. Leave huge amounts of film undeveloped, and then take them in one roll at a time. Each roll takes about an hour, right? Or you can run to Starbucks for an evil-looking-on-the-outside, totally-innocent-on-the-inside, costs-too-much-but-oh-so-yummy hot beverage. Or, you can always just bring a book and ignore the children. When we mommies put on the chauffeur hat, and start shuttling kids to activity days, soccer practice, piano lessons, doctor's visits, dentist's visits, dance classes, art class, singing lessons, karate, tae-kwon-doe, horseback riding, Yoga, Pilates, French lessons, blacksmithing apprenticehip, and glass-blowing, there is bound to be some waiting time. Bloggers of the world, what do you with this waiting time?