Procrastination

Yesterday was my day to be sick. We all had a cold in turns, the youngest had it in his lungs and required nebulizer treatments for a night and day. I had it in my lungs, but had other symptoms too, so maybe it was something else. West Nile? It doesn't really matter, I spent the day like a beached whale on the couch.

You would think this would have been the perfect opportunity to catch up on all those little things that have been nagging at me. I have a list a mile long - phone calls to make to find a place for our wayward boys to play during girl scout meetings, items to list on eBay during the no-listing fees month, updating our checkbook with Quicken, calling friends and family.

I got nothing done. Except things that weren't on the list. Our office was a complete mess, a pig-sty with guinea pigs included! My one expenditure of physical energy involved cleaning up this tiny space, vacuuming and dusting so the kids can use MathScore up there. That computer has a number pad, which is a critical component of the program. After that, I collapsed again.

I think I'm phone-adverse because in my former life I spent entire days on the phone at work. Of course, it's been 7 1/2 years since I had that job. I think the statute of limitations has run out on that excuse. I finally made some of the phone calls in the afternoon - easy enough to do from the couch. The problem is, there are always a million other interesting things to do than what I have to do. I need to find a way out of my procrastinating self, it's probably a learned behavior and one I don't want my kids to pick up.

Mark went to the library for me to return many things, pick up others on hold and fix a DVD problem. He had one of those annoyingly funny conversations with the librarian.

"We checked out this DVD, but can't watch it because it's locked."

"You have to check it out for us to unlock it."

"We checked it out, but it wasn't unlocked."

"Once you check it out, we'll unlock it."

"Somehow it happened to be locked when we brought it home."

"No, you need to check it out first and then we'll unlock it."

Silence, followed by "Oh, this one is already checked out!"

More silence, followed by "You should always check to make sure the DVDs are unlocked before you leave the library."

Maybe these kinds of conversations are what lead me to procrastinate?