Galvin crop

Take some time away from the same old, same old and — if you pay attention — you can learn something.

Here, for example, is something that I learned over the past few weeks: It takes me eight minutes to empty the dishwasher.

I can try to speed up my process … eight minutes. I can feel like I’m moving as slow as molasses … eight minutes. I can mistakingly put a salad fork or two in with the dinner forks, fumble about to rectify the disaster … eight minutes. I can take a spare moment to stretch my back after bending over to store away the pots and pans …

… well, you get the idea.

I know this because I empty the dishwasher my lovely significant other (no, not the cat) is stretched out on the couch with a warm compress across her eyes. She grants herself 10 minutes for that rejuvenating application, during which I shut the garage door, feed the Head of the Household, change out her water, turn off unnecessary lights, check to see if I’d remembered to shut the garage door, and various and sundry other nightly rituals so that we can head to bed.

All that takes two minutes.

Speaking of two minutes, I also learned recently that, according to our website, it takes two minutes to read this cognitive offering each week. If you found this through the link on our home page, you can see that a note informing you that this takes “2 min to read” — which is for a couple of reasons:

First, why should it take twice as long to read as it does to write?

And, second, if you can read this in two minutes, why does it take the electronic voice on the website four minutes and 23 seconds (give or take pausing for ellipses) to read it to you?Hot stoves and pretty women not withstanding, there seems to be something relatively askew about the how time is being measured in our weekly sharing of cognitive offerings.

This isn’t, for instance, the “two-minute warning” of a football game, wherein all manner of folderol and fiddle-de-dee can transpire — turning those 120 seconds into a trudge through the mud lasting up to a half-hour.

Those behind the “2 min to read” notice clearly are basing their findings on something and, since I suspect they’re not reading these missives themselves, or else the homepage would announce that clicking the link reveals something which will take ”4 min and 23 seconds (give or take …) to read,” that some sort of intricate research has revealed that you — yes, you — take two minutes to scroll from top to bottom of the opened page.

Clearly, meanwhile, this does not apply to those of you reading this in our print edition, over your morning coffee, waiting for your three-minute egg to boil, and wondering where Peggy Dover is going to take you this week.

“When you reach a certain age,” the uniquely observant critical thinker George Saunders writes, “you see that time is all we have.”

Saunders dispenses that advice in his short story “Love Letter,” which I also found time to read over the past few weeks.

“Love Letter” is presented as coming from a grandfather to a grandson who is wondering what can be done about an act of injustice and upheaval set in a near-future that is all too real to envision.

In the midst of this turmoil, the grandfather advises, what he’s learned about what truly matters is that it’s those moments unburdened by focusing on surrounding adversity that provide the qualitative construct of our existence.

“Love Letter” will take you more that two minutes to read — I likely could empty the dishwasher, feed the cat and check on the status of the garage door (twice) before you’ve finished it — and, yet, depending on what color is your parachute, no measure of time might have passed at all.

Time is all we have, and our two minutes are up for this week. You may now continue on with what remains of the other 23 hours and 58 minutes of your day.