Multitasking

A distant Scarlet Tanager

Multitasking is one of those new words that entered our hard heads via hard drives. It’s earliest and simplest definition, “running a number of programs simultaneously,” wasn’t much of a leap from what my dad called, biting off more than you can chew.
So it was yesterday morning, one of those glorious Sunday mornings when all of the have-to-do things are pushed to the end of the have-to-wait line. Seventy degrees, quiet. The church crowd was still dreaming dreams of what they’d soon have to ask forgiveness for. It was time for a moment of discovery. My blinding flash of the obvious was that a person, no matter how talented he might think he is, cannot successfully look for a Scarlet Tanager, read the Sunday paper, photograph Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and eat a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie all at the same time. Hey, I’m multitasking, I told the Chipmunk who had his eye on my pie.
Someplace along the way, feeling lucky to get out of bed each morning, I’ve come to the realization that I have more important things to accomplish than I might have time for. Multitasking is the only way to go. My mantra has become: Better to burn out than rust out. Or, maybe it’s: Monkey see, monkey do. Whatever.
The newspaper loomed as the greatest physical task. Summing up Sunday’s stories of criminals and politicians—the best money can buy—on balance it appears more of us get robbed by a fountain pen than a gun, as Bob Dylan has noted.
The Scarlet Tanager continued to stay just far enough away so that I can’t count him as a yard bird—yet. The Ruby-throated Hummingbirds cooperatively worked our three feeders and paid little attention to me or my attempts to stop the action of their wings. I’m sure I heard one male say, “You call that a flash? This is a flash!”

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

And the strawberry-rhubarb pie? Hard to imagine, that with two of us in the house, there was still any left within 12 hours from when Susan removed it from the oven.
So, what’s left to do? I can’t coax that Scarlet Tanager to come any closer, I slowed the action of the hummingbird’s wings, the newspaper—as song writer John Gorka says, “It’s best to take a little at a time; too much and you’re not portable; too little and you’ll be making happy rhymes.”
That leaves me the pie. I’m sure Susan won’t notice …

Ruby-throated Hummingbird