Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s valiant effort to perform double-duty in Washington gets noticed by the New York Times, which notes that she has many more meetings with advocacy groups and constituents than when Minnesota actually had two U.S. senators.

“I am a mother, so I’m used to balancing things,” Klobuchar told the Times in a telephone interview Tuesday from Vietnam, where she is part of a visiting congressional delegation led by Sen. John McCain. (Her daughter, too, she said, has accepted the new intensity of her mother’s responsibilities “in the grudging way that a 13-year-old does.”)

Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who was also a Minnesota senator, said the nation’s economic woes and the growing needs of constituents increased the already-overwhelming demands facing a senator. “Doing that all by yourself?” Mondale said. “It’s a big burden, really daunting.”

Klobuchar relates amusing questions: Does she get two votes? (No.) Does she get the other senator’s salary? (No.)

And Capitol tour guides have come to point her out as a curiosity. (“Senator at large,” she says, is the one riff she does not much care for.)

And she says Norm Coleman has every right to pursue his recount options.

She had hoped for resolution — and a second senator — by the time the ice melted  on Lake Minnetonka, down near the Twin Cities. But now, she’s moved that timetable back — to the time Lake of the Woods, up near the Canadian border, thaws.