Once

When I was 22 I traveled in Chile for 5 months. I actually lived with a family for part of that time and every day at 4:00 pm we'd have once, as in Spanish for eleven. Except that eleven was actually at 4:00 and that was the time of day when we'd have mashed avocado on bread and coffee. It was awesome. I looked forward to it everyday. Then when I lived in Israel I discovered aruchat arba, which means 4:00 meal. The Israelis are obviously way more literal than the Chileans. I guess it's "tea time" elsewhere in the world. Where is she going with this? My point is that it appears everywhere in the world people need to drink some caffeinated beverage mid-afternoon because they are running on fumes and still have an evening of wrestling kids and making dinner and going to the park and brushing teeth and fighting over bedtime to look forward to. And so, like many parents before me, I am drinking my second cup right now, looking forward to the managed chaos that awaits.