the procrastinating girl

Summer Buzz

There is one area of my life where I am inarguably low maintenance.  I am a wash n' wear girl.  Open my bathroom cabinet and you will not find, as my seven-year-old now knows, 'product'.  I always care about how I look, I just don't need extra-deep conditioning hair gel mask glaze.  Or a comb.  But the truth is, I hadn't gotten a haircut in quite a long time.  Seeing as I spend most of my days running around town, or literally running, with it back in a pony tail, it hadn't bothered me until recently.  Then I hit a wall.  And I wanted to see Joseph.  Immediately.  But as a non-product person, I don't buy into the rules of the game.  Here's how it played out:

"Hello, this is Amy Oringel.  I'd like a haircut with Joseph."

"Ok Amy.  When would you like to come in?"

"Right now."

Crickets.

"Um, Joseph is booked through next week.  What is your schedule like?"

 "Thanks, I'll call you back."

After three such attempts, I realized that it was fine to be the girl without the blow dryer.  On my own time.   But to get in, I had to play along.  I tried again and booked over two weeks in advance.  My appointment was yesterday.  My ponytail is history.  I have a short summer cut that requires nothing more than a swish of my towel.  And I am off and running again.

Swann Dive

When it comes to reading for pleasure, I am a non-fiction girl.  I forgave Doris Kearns Goodwin.  And mourned David Halberstam.  And worshiped Woodward and Bernstein to the point that it was kinda odd.  In recent years, I have become increasingly preoccupied with philosophy, particularly existentialism.  I like the heft of a passage on life's true ambiguity at the end of a day consisting of two playdates and back-to-back swim lessons.  But still, I felt a true literary accomplishment was needed.  After all, philosophy is boundless.  Sure you may complete a book, but you are truly never finished.  Are you?  Can that question even be answered?   See?   Ok, so, enter my project of the summer.  Alright, before we get excited, I am not cleaning closets.  Nor putting together photo albums.  That would, in fact, be productive.  I am tackling Proust.  Yes, I'm a wee bit nuts.  But so far Mr. Swann and I are co-habitating just fine.  Of course right now I'm watching reruns of The Office. 

Name-Dropping

I love watching anything insider-y.  Anything that lets me feel like, even for a second, that I'm in on the joke.  Entourage.  Wag The Dog.  The Player.  And more than life itself, Soapdish.  So I smiled in my Honeycomb the other day when I was presented with an equivalent moment: a TPG topic about TPG.  A few weeks ago, I started getting emails saying my real domain name was about to expire.  And I had to 'act now'.  Well, my brain simply does not respond to two-word commands.  'Renew domain' got lost on the list of priorities somewhere in between 'pack for endless after-school activities' and 'try and find floor of car.'  The day of renewal reckoning passed without my attention.  Then, I got another email.  And if I'm not mistaken, the tone was rather scolding.  I went online immediately while huffing and puffing.  The URL had been available to the general public for over a week.  Had it been taken?  Was there another girl in Colorado who enjoyed basking in the glory of putting things off as I do?  Maryland?  Alaska?  Palin??  Well, a few clicks later and I was saved.  The domain name is mine again for two more years and counting.  And no, I haven't done anything with it yet.

HBD TPG!

Naturally, I'm a little behind.  But just over a year ago, I started The Procrastinating Girl.  I did so eagerly, but with zero expectation.  And I don't mean setting a bar for how many site visits or repeat users I would generate each week.  Or month.  I mean, I started it on a Tuesday.  Would I want to bail by Thursday?  But the frittering away of a blog specifically about frittering things away just felt like the ultimate, and most pathetic, tragedy.   I kept at it.  With zero expectation.   And very quickly, something entirely unexpected happened.  I loved it.   And it became a part of my routine.  But if we're taking stock on this occasion, it's tough to score.  Is the blog a true success?  It brings joy and a certain amount of quick fulfillment into my life.  On the other hand:

New Leaf

My name is Amy Oringel and I am a vegetarian.  Yes, it's new.  Well, the notion has been dancing around my life for years, but I just decided to commit to it.  I spent most of my childhood eating basically nothing.  A big help considering I was the size of a sea scallop.  My parents' endless frustration resulted in choruses of 'Amy, EAT YOUR DINNER!!'  Instead, I took solace in many late-night bowls of Grape Nuts.  When I got older and was exposed to more choices (curry! lemongrass!), I saw glimmers of hope for my palate.  Along the way, meat of any kind grew unappealing.  Burgers fell off my radar first.  And poultry?   Please.  Giblet may be the most horrifying word in our language (not counting proper names).  So I have been in a kind of semi-veggie limbo for probably the last five years.  But I don't do limbo well (Nor do I limbo well. Another story).  So now I am much happier knowing where I stand.  Here on the green leaf-eater side with the diplodocus.  We have thick bodies and very long necks.  Yeah, that sounds like me. 

Garden Slug

There is an elephant in the room.  And I don't do well with elephants.  I don't mind large animals.  Since childhood, my favorite has been whales.  I find polar bears inordinately adorable.  I even rode a camel once in Israel.  And I did happen to marry a very tall man.  But when it comes to elephants, I have a problem.  I like things in my life to be acknowledged.  Cards on the table.  I have something hanging over my head and each day it goes unresolved, I become less optimistic that it can happen.  It's the garden.  Last year, we had a big, bountiful veggie and herb garden that was tended to by our family.  It was roto-tilled, staked,  fenced, planted and watered.  For the next time, we had plans to compost.  I know!  But, unfortunately, this year we are down a man.  A big man.  My husband had surgery and can't move his right arm.  At all.  So it's basically up to me.  Roto-till?  Is that French for 'strained lower back'?   I am torn and need to decide.  The little ones will start inquiring as soon as the thermometer starts to rise.

Fate Accompli

Yesterday morning I was still inexplicably drawn to my unending spring cleaning projects.  The weather was glorious.  The kids were cooperating.  It had the makings of a perfect Sunday.  Yet those boxes, untouched for the previous 106 weeks that we've lived in this house, needed attention.  So I knelt before them, almost in prayer, to see what they held.  I felt they owed me something.  An Egyptian staff encrusted with jewels?  A yellowed photograph depicting a relative steeped in scandal?  A missing earring?  Well, here's what I got.  The box for my running watch.  A long piece of shoelace.  Unidentifiable electrical cords.  As I sifted through the wreckage dejectedly, the phone rang.  It was Nancy asking if we wanted to go to the city for the afternoon.  Always happy to move on from work, I left my bedroom floor covered in bits and pieces of my own stupid mess.  But I felt no guilt.  No pain.  The park was filled people.  Energy.  Blossoms.  And about an hour into our visit, an old man walked right next to us while holding the hands of two much younger women.  As if I needed further proof that the decision to abandon ship on my cleaning project was a good one, this would have been perfect evidence that there is some such higher being.  My first Woody Allen sighting came on a perfect Spring day.

Spring Cleaning

It's late.  I had intended to start this post earlier, but my house was bombarded with a relentless electrical storm along with golf-ball-sized hail.  Apparently, spring is here.  Aside from the petrifying dose of mother nature, how else can you note the change of seasons?  This morning pre-Grape Nuts, I began to attempt to declutter.  It's truly an annual phenomenon.  And I have to move slowly or I'm liable to pull something.  I started upstairs.  Back in December for Zoe's birthday party, we had moved all the playroom junk up to the office.  And. there. it. has. remained.  The path from door to desk chair had become a life-threatening obstacle course.  Dramatic?  Have you ever mistakenly stepped barefoot on a wooden block?  Oh, it's a world of hurt.  As I was making 'keep' and 'give away' piles, I found a white plastic bag from Target.  Hardly unusual.   This one contained school supplies.  At the beginning of the year, I had bought different notebooks and folders, not knowing exactly what kind Sydney needed and assuming I would return the extras.  Right.  Of course these now unreturnable items can be used in a second by my songwriter-poet-artists-to-be.  I wish I could say the same for the toddler size 7 shoes I found in a bag next to my dresser.  Any takers?

Dr. G

I hate going to the doctor far more than anyone should.  I hate the waiting room.  I hate the industrial carpeting and the overhead lighting.  And the tattered magazines from 2002.  And the feeling of impending doom.  Yesterday, six months after I was supposed to, I paid mine a visit.  I sat in her waiting room.  I read an extremely old Newsweek.  Newsweek.  I pondered my fate as the minutes passed.  Many.  105 to be exact.  An hour and 45 minutes.  Usually, it's my own psychological failings that have me in a tailspin.  The poke and prod factor.  This time, my blood was boiling.  My precious alone time was squandered!  Newsweek?!  But it must be some kind of karma.  If I had scheduled my appointment back in the fall when I was supposed to, would I have been called in immediately? 

Say Cheese

I am a pretty level-headed gal.  Far more inclined toward science than religion.  A believer more in the realistic than the fantastical.  Sure, a burning bush at one point did something to help my people, but consider if you will the temperature of the Middle East desert in the blazing sun.  But to answer Jim McKay's question from 1980 (was it Jim McKay?), over time I have come to realize that I do believe in miracles.  At least small ones.  My latest proof came yesterday morning.  I actually remembered that it was Picture Day at Zoe's school.  And on a Monday!  She was dropped off in a lovely dress and evenly-distributed pigtails.  The only thing missing was payment for her class photographs.  It was due last week.  Moses I am not.