To get to Reston by 6 p.m., I have to be walking out the front door by 5:27, backing down the driveway by 5:30, and hitting West Ox Road by 5:40. Even with the unpredictable traffic. The morning routine requires 30 minutes from shower to tie to truck. How long was it between the end of Lisa and the beginning of Beth? Six and a half months. I took my first steps in life on May 20, 1970 and I walked down The Lawn at UVA on Graduation Day on May 20, 1990. Twenty years between the biggest steps. I know what weekends I have to work between now and September and I know what day Christmas falls on this year. Monday. I use to lie in bed at night waiting for the sound of the front door opening, signaling Kathleen's return home. I would gauge my anger in half-hours: "If she's not home by 1:30, then maybe I have good reason to be mad." The Commonwealth of Virginia says I was married for 18 months, yet we separated after only 24 days. But the real truth lies in my commitment: December 24, 1997 to March 30, 1999. If I go in to work at 10:30 a.m., I can't leave at 4:30 because that's a measly 6 hours. But if I leave at 5:00, I can round my day up to 7 hours and that's far less guilt. Yes, I know when my last journal entry was, and yes, I know when I last mentioned bologna sandwiches. My immediate consciousness is mapped out from Sunday through Saturday, 10-5 shifts, 6:20 and 7:30 games, 8:40 and 9:50 games, a single 7:15 game, and a completely free day floating somewhere in the work week where I have nothing to do between a 9:30 wake-up and a 2 a.m. shut-down. Every few days it suddenly hits me that the date is important. An anniversary? A birthday? An event in history? A personal milestone? I don't quite know what it is, but I can feel it. My cycle of Budget runs from the 18th of the month through the 19th of the following month. The best holiday? New Year's Eve: It's a celebration of a changing of a period of time. If I forget my watch at home, I'll grab one out of the case at work to wear throughout the day. I measure happiness and stress and complacency by days, weeks, months and years, as in, "Ah, it was a bad week." And the foolish thinking says that just the changing of the calendar page will improve things. Out of work by 5:00, home by 5:30, email checked, dressed for ball and fed by 6:30, out the door by 6:40, at the field by 6:50, run out to leftfield by 7:15, done by 8:25, home by 8:35, and finally ignore time until the yawning starts around 2 a.m. And when I curl up in bed I have nothing else to do but sleep. But, of course, I know exactly how many hours of sleep I'm going to get.

Time? It sustains me, it drives me, and it consumes me.