Now…What was I Doing?

I watched an old Ellen DeGeneres comedy clip about procrastination. About how she sat down to write on her computer and, before she even started, noticed how dusty her desk was.  So she went downstairs to get a cleaning rag, but stopped to pet the cat.  Which took forever, of course, because cats have a tendency to act all cute when you give them some attention. And then she noticed how disorganized her CD collection was, so…

…well, you know how the rest goes.

I laughed, of course, because I recognized certain behaviors I had in common.  Most of us do – right?

Except that I also thought, but I’m not that bad.

And then I went into the kitchen to make myself a salad for lunch.

But first I had to clean up the dishes from breakfast because, God knows, you can’t make a mess when there’s already a mess in there. 

After that, I had to make a pit stop because, well, running water does that to me.  And I noticed the sheets were off the bed, which reminded me they were in the washing machine.  So after I went to the bathroom, I walked over to the washer and dryer.  The clothes in the dryer were dry, so I hauled the load out and put them on the bed to fold and put away. 

But then I remembered I was making a salad for lunch, so I went back to the kitchen and washed the lettuce leaves and tore them up for my salad.

Realizing I had left the door to the dryer open – and the wet sheets were still sitting in the washing machine not getting any drier – I went back to the washing machine and moved the load to the dryer and started it.

Finally, I got back to the kitchen to work on my salad.  I cut up vegetables and threw in some dried cranberries and slivered almonds, but decided the salad needed a few garbanzo beans.  So I went to the pantry to get some.  While in there, I noticed how disorganized it was after our last shopping trip, so I started turning cans face front and grouping like items and…

…and then it hit me.  Egad – I AM that bad a procrastinator!

It took me an entire hour to make a salad that would normally take about 5-10 minutes, tops!

Vince says this is ADD behavior.  He says he’s just as bad.  He gets on the computer to do one thing and then, forty-five minutes later, he can’t remember why he sat down in front of the computer in the first place.  Because it couldn’t possibly have been to watch all those old Tim Conway clips from The Carol Burnett Show.

So now I’m wondering if I‘m a procrastinator or if I simply have a touch of ADD.

…aaaand I just spent 20 minutes online looking up the differences between the two.  Ack!  Plus, my research didn’t really answer the question as it was mostly amateurs giving their opinions on the subject.

I have a theory that with the proliferation of information at our fingertips, we all tend to get more distracted these days. Used to be if you wondered about something, you either had to look it up in the dictionary or encyclopedia (if your family was lucky enough to own a set), or you had to take a trip to the local library to find out.  So it had to be a subject you were really interested in learning about.

Now, we just hit up Google over any little musing and then, before we even type in our query, we’re distracted by something else.

Right now, I have about five projects partly completed and awaiting my attention. And those are just the projects staring me in the face.  I have lots of other ideas of projects I want to accomplish.  Some of them may just take months and/or years to come to fruition.

Fortunately for me, I will eventually focus and get them all done.

Like this blog, for instance.  Just because it has taken me four hours to write (well, maybe forty minutes to write and three hours and twenty minutes of procrastination as my attention was diverted by other things), but I will finish it.

But it isn’t without some level of stress as I wonder why I can’t just start one project, finish it and then move on to the next one.

I guess it all just makes me human. And I’m in decent company.  After all, Ellen DeGeneres has managed to do pretty well for herself. 

So I…oh look!  There’s Twinks.  She’s looking all cute curled up on the chair next to me, so I need to pet her furry little bell…

Oh, never mind.  Go ahead and call me a procrastinator. Tell me I have ADD. I can take it.

(But I DID finish this blog. So there!)

Partridge in a Pear Tree? I Think Not.

One of my least favorite post-Christmas chores (after reading instructions to try to figure out how some new electronic gadget we received for Christmas works, anyway) is taking down the Christmas decorations and, in particular, the Christmas tree.

I love the holidays and all the bright, pretty lights and shiny ornaments on the tree, but somehow find it a little depressing to look at once we flip the calendar to a new year. I’m not sure why this is, but it is. So on my to-do list over New Year's break is always “Dismantle the Christmas Tree.” It’s not a simple task, since I load up our tree every year with LOTS of decorations. And it's something I tend to procrastinate on until I can't stand it anymore.

This year, however, I couldn’t get the darn thing down fast enough.

Why? Because Jinx, our little black kitten, discovered that she could evade her playmate, Twinks, by climbing up the branches of the Christmas tree where she’d look down at her nemesis and all but stick out her little tongue.

We hadn’t seen this new talent because we were out for the evening, but discovered it the next day. I looked at the tree and realized that my carefully draped beads were all haphazardly jumbled up on one side of the tree. Hmmm…I thought…that’s curious. I wonder how that happened?

And then I saw it with my own two eyes: Jinx scampering up the branches of the tree and taunting Twinks, who was either too big (or too big a ‘fraidy cat) to climb up the tree after her.

No matter how sternly I told Jinx “NO!” and pulled her off the tree, she kept darting up the branches as ornaments crashed down on the carpeting with a thud and beads lost their tentative perch on the branches and trailed onto the floor.

I tried putting her in her kitty cage, but I couldn’t stand her mewling – it made me feel too bad. (Plus, I couldn’t find any earplugs to drown out the noise!)

So as to avoid another day of tree climbing, I woke up bright and early on Sunday morning and immediately started pulling off ornaments. The beads were a big mess and I spent most of my time trying to untangle them. The job was made even more difficult since the kittens thought the beads were a nifty new toy and swiped and batted at each string as I unwound them from the tree.

By the time Vince came downstairs, I’d completely stripped the tree so the poor thing was standing there naked. Well, okay, except that it’s a pre-lit tree – so it was still wearing its lights. They weren’t, however, shining brightly – so it was a rather sorry-looking specimen.

Vince’s first order of business after making coffee was to pull the box out of the garage and pack the tree away for another year.

And then the kittens had nothing to play with.

Yeah, right.

They are creative little buggers, if nothing else. They immediately moved on to climbing up the back of the dining room chair to try to reach one of the plants we’d moved out of their way.

While I can’t quite see the war strategy they’ve devised in their little kitty heads, I’m guessing the living room curtains are their next plan of attack. As a countermeasure, we’ve already pulled the curtains up and out of the way of their little claws.

Yes, our formerly lovely little nest is looking a bit torn up these days.

I DID buy a pair of kitty claw nippers to make them a little less lethal, but I think I’ve managed to clip maybe six of Jinx’s claws before she squirmed out of my grasp. And Twinks? Haven’t even gotten close!

Ah well. These, too, are the joys of having kittens. And, hey, there was no procrastination involved whatsoever in getting the Christmas tree down and packed away this year – that’s a plus, isn’t it?!

Procrastination

You know how as your life progresses, you realize there are things you kind of stink at – and then there are other things at which you’ve become quite proficient? Well, I realize I’m very, very good at something. Well, besides spelling.

And that thing is...procrastination.

Yes, it’s true. I’ve finally become an expert at something. In fact, I believe that I am the Queen of Procrastination. While I am sure there are many people out there vying for my title, I have honed my craft until it’s nearly perfect.

About the only thing I didn’t procrastinate on was my birth. Yep, that was about the only time in my life I showed up somewhere a little early. Probably I caused so much consternation being early that I vowed, at the tender age of 10 seconds, never to show up early anywhere ever again.

Apparently I took it to heart, too. I rarely show up at parties precisely at the start time printed on the invitation. In the back of my mind I think that parties nowadays are like parties from when I was in college, which meant that you could pretty much show up three days later and it would still be in full swing. If you actually showed up at the time the party was scheduled to start, you’d find no one but the hosts sitting around still thinking about making their beer-and-chips run.

And parties aren’t the only thing at which I procrastinate. Back in the day, I was very good at procrastinating on homework and book reports and such. It’d be the night before a 20-hour project was due and I’d decide to get started around 2AM. Somehow or other, I managed to pull off a good grade, so unfortunately I never learned the lesson about tackling a project early.

Sometimes this actually works in my favor in work situations. If I procrastinate on writing a letter or responding to something I really don’t want to respond to, I sometimes find that the situation resolves itself without any effort on my part. I take this as proof that procrastination is not always a bad thing.

I have aspirations of being well prepared ahead of time. I mean, I buy birthday cards weeks before the recipient’s birthday. That’s a good thing – right? Problem is, when it comes time to mail the card, I can’t remember where I put it. So then I’m left scrambling to find another appropriate card and it ends up being late. Probably I should just go out and buy all “Happy Belated Birthday” cards. It might save me a few bucks in the long run.

Getting ready to go somewhere is the worst, though. What happens is that I figure out the time I SHOULD leave and plan backwards from there. But inevitably something crucial comes up – like a rerun of Friends that I’ve already seen 53 times – and I miss my start time entirely. Then I recalculate the timing, but now have to rush around getting ready all the while grumbling that my hair is going to look – once again – like crap.

That’s usually the worse case scenario, though. Most of the time I manage to get ready more or less on time – and then I literally fly down the stairs and out the door with seconds to spare on my self-imposed schedule. The only problem with this method is that I never before had to allow for the “husband factor.”

Husbands, you see, are dressed and ready to go approximately 3.5 seconds after they shut off the water in the shower. They can leave the house with their hair dripping wet and it’s okay. That is so not right! Women, by comparison, are still standing in the shower 3.5 seconds after they’ve shut the water off. They’re trying not to drip on the rug on the bathroom floor because a damp rug is not pleasant to walk on. They are carrying on an internal debate about which moisturizer to use depending upon the atmospheric conditions while simultaneously re-thinking the outfit they selected three weeks prior when they received the invitation in the first place.

The problem with husbands being ready to go 3.5 seconds after their shower is that they then figure they have plenty of time to start a project while they wait for their wives to get ready. Said project may involve power tools, which is not a good thing. Or it might simply involve sandwich meat and condiments, which is confusing as the event they’re heading to most likely involves food.

When I do the flying down the stairs thing and snag my purse on my way out the door, I take Vince completely by surprise. He is usually sitting at his computer thinking about starting another game of online backgammon since he’s waiting for me anyway. He knows that we’re getting close to the time we absolutely must leave, but mere seconds before he heard the hair dryer so he figures he has the time. Not so much. I mean, when I’m ready, I’m ready – and it’s time to leave. NOW.

So when he sees me fly by, he starts the process of shutting down his computer. Then he gets up, walks over to the basket where his keys, cell phone and money clip are stored and he fills his pockets with these items. I am, meanwhile, standing at the door, or worse - at the car - tapping my foot and getting increasingly frustrated. But he calmly puts on his shoes and only then is he ready to walk out the door. Problem is that now we’re late and I’m cranky.

I’m thinking I should probably incorporate a “Two Minute Warning” into the schedule so he knows where I am in the process and he can prepare accordingly. That would be the fair and right thing to do.

Alas, I can’t usually tell that I’ll be ready two minutes hence. Sometimes the gods of Women’s Wear Daily work in my favor and I’m able to get ready with nary a clothing snafu nor a hairstyling glitch. But there are other times that “stuff” happens. Like the shoes I’ve selected don’t exactly match the top I’m wearing and I’m trying to find last-minute alternatives. Or I sneeze just as I’m applying waterproof mascara, which means I have to take a powerwasher to remove all the black smudges under my eyes and start the whole makeup application process over.

We have a couple weddings coming up soon and that puts me in a tizzy. Because, you know, you actually have to arrive at the church a half hour BEFORE the time stated on the invitation. It’s enough to give a girl like me an ulcer. Maybe Vince and I should do a practice run this weekend with the Two Minute Warning to see how we do. Or…maybe not. We still have a couple weeks.

Eh. Think I’ll decide later…