the procrastinating girl

A Gray (Lady) Day

One of the monumental pleasures of my life is the Sunday New York Times.  Even after we canceled our daily subscription, thereby hypocritically contributing to the failure of the modern-day print industry (I read the Times every morning online), we kept our weekend delivery intact.  It's nothing less than ritual.  But today when I pulled down the blue plastic banana peel-esque covering, the first thing I noticed was a printed white piece of paper.  It appeared like the note Deep Throat would hide in Bob Woodward's Times when they were scheduling their clandestine meetings in a Virginia underground garage.  But this is my life.  Apparently, the Times production schedule is behind and I am still owed one section.  Which section?  It was checked off with a big black X.  My eyes quickly scanned the list.  Please let it be Automotive.  Please let it be Automotive.  The X landed on Arts & Leisure.  My favorite.  I am sympathetic about running behind, but The Times owes me huge.

Holiday Time?

I just noticed two things.  One, I got 86 catalogs in yesterday's mail.  Two, this morning we had frost on the ground.  It doesn't take my favorite Belgian detective to deduce that the holidays are indeed coming.  Which is so fascinating considering my kids' Halloween costumes are still in a ball on my kitchen floor.  As usual, I am already behind.  What's worse, I don't even know how behind I am.  With Christmas, you are furnished with a set date.  There's no mystery.  No motion in the ocean.  The Jews like to keep it interesting.  When is the first night of Chanukah?  No idea.  I think it's like mid-ish-second-week-pre-teen-ish of December.  If that's clear.  So while the majority of the world is casually logging on Amazon.com and comfortably clicking on standard shipping, I still need to Google "Jewish holiday calendar 2009."  And see what my fate holds.  If it is one of those unfortunate years when the first candle overlaps with the night we carve the turkey, my kids may be unwrapping leftover KitKat bars as present number one.

The Late Show

I was just wondering if procrastinating is a weird form of being late to the party.  Given my psychotic compulsion with time, I am never physically late to anything, but, metaphorically, it's another story.  My birthday doesn't arrive for another three weeks (or rather, seventeen days, three hours and twenty-six minutes), so, as the November baby, I had the baked in pleasure of being the last to qualify for my driver's license.  And then I failed my road test.  Twice.  Other late-comings didn't leave quite the same mark.  I waited until I was a 20-something to allow peanut butter into my world and that took very nicely.  The hot dog I tried back then?  Not so much.  And there's a party to which I was already very late.  It's the tale of the Guess jeans, the ones I was sure my mom bought me for Chanukah circa 1983.  So sure I saved the unopened box until night eight, the grand finale, when I confidently ripped off the blue and silver paper to find, wait, a dictionary.  A dictionary, I should say, that I still own and use.  So I'm laughing as I type this post while stationed at my favorite post.  It's a place with one very small and unabiding lamp, but tonight I'm using this contraption called, um, a booklight?  Zoe has one in hot pink.  Late as always, but tomorrow for the doctor I will be right on time.

The Big Picture

I was lying in bed last night thinking about this blog (I actually do that, in spite of what the length between posts would indicate) and dredging up the minutiae to use for today.  As we know, it's never hard.  I am staring at a stack of paperwork so high it resembles an accordian for Zoe's American Girl doll.  But then I thought, I am getting better at this.  Yes, I've been to the Food Emporium three days in a row.  For the same purpose.  But overall, I have been on an upswing.  Birthday presents have been purchased days, not hours in advance.  I almost always seem to be able to find a writing utensil.  And only once did I risk running out of gas on the highway because my tank light had been on for, um, awhile, before I refueled.  I did so at Zoe's request.  So as I glanced to my bedside at the open space where my moving boxes sat for the previous two plus years, an air of self-assuredness came over me.  Until I thought, there is, of course, the big picture.  Here on TPG I usually play it very small.  The dishwasher detergent.  Am I guilty of ignoring the larger aspects of my life as well?  Do I have a master plan for myself and my family?  Should we be learning other languages?  Putting solar panels on our roof?   Eh, I'll think about it later.  I have to get the mail.  It's been there since Friday.

Don't Do It

There are some things I do that I know are strange and wrong, even as I'm doing them, but it's no use.  We already know I go way, way beyond the speed limit.  But I'm talking about behavior outside what could be discussed comfortably over passed chicken satay.  I cut my own hair.  Why?  Well, as previously mentioned, I often wait too long to call for a haircut appointment and, fed up with resembling some early homo erectus female, I will take matters into my own hands.  Surprisingly, the results aren't usually Hindenburg-esque.  Curly hair is great at hiding mistakes.  And I am learning when to put down the scissors and just.  walk.  away.  So after spending an hour and a nauseatingly high sum yesterday getting my girls cute sort-of bobs, this morning I locked myself in my bathroom and emerged with what the salon industry affectionately refers to as 'long layers'.  It's not that bad.  I don't think.  And besides, I have five whole days before my 20-year high school reunion for it to grow back. 

Dreamgirl

One of the sub-heads of procrastination -- off-shoots? second cousins? -- is the unfinished process.  My closet hides bags of fabric that are 'pillows'.  And two days ago, after months of clicking 'Not Now', a button seemingly created just for me, I went ahead with an upgrade to iTunes.  Why?  Beyonce.  I think she is talented, flawless, makes smart choices and Jay-Z will never leave her.  Seriously.  I went to buy her new song 'Sweet Dreams' and felt she deserved something better than my old, bedraggled iTunes 7.  Well, I installed the new beast, waited proudly, and was then told I also needed to upgrade my browser in order to access the music store.  Naturally.  I decided to put my laptop on 'sleep' and then myself as well.  Ever since I have been tragically Beyonce-free.  I am so not...Sasha Fierce.

Scouting Report

It's one of the great contradictions of my life that I was a Girl Scout.  I can't pretend that I enjoyed it, even as I earned several billion badges that I plastered up and down my green sash.  Though I think that had a bit more to do with the odd coincidence that my mom was troop leader.  Was there a special badge about nepotism as the real key to getting ahead in life?  Anyway, decades later, as Sydney seems to enjoy it, my inner failings in Scout-dom are still revealed.  Those petals I ironed on Syd's blue Daisy pinny formed more of an impressionist painting than a perfectly distributed flower.  And yesterday, when I waited until the last possible day to go buy her new Brownie uniform, I was greeted on the phone, not by a friendly voice of someone hoping to change the world, but by this recording, "Today the Girl Scout offices are closed due to an all-staff meeting."  I need a box of Samoas.  Stat.

Pink Slip

Yesterday Zoe busted out, 'Mom, how come you say you're going to do something and then it never happens?'  I asked her if she was secretly trying to make it onto my blog.  Actually, for the third day in a row I promised to take her on the oxymoronic 'really fun errand', but kept blowing it off.  There is a post office pink slip wedged in between an empty Snapple bottle and some really gross change in the console of my car.  Every day it becomes a little bit more tattered.  And sticky.  But it's a good one.  Over the summer we took a private pottery lesson at a studio in an old yellow barn outside of Quebec.  Tres magnifique.  Now our finished masterpieces have arrived.  If only I can get the slip out from under today's granola bar wrappers.  And Zoe and me to defy the odds.

Game On

Yes, I'm back.  And yes, I know it's been quite a long time.  TypePad even told me so.  I'm wondering if you thought I had been reformed in some kind of radical personality change thereby rendering TPG obsolete.  Had my brain been switched with that of a monkey or woman in a neighboring suburban town who buys stamps in bulk and plans her meals weeks in advance?  It's a lovely thought. The truth is my beloved blog has sat untouched, much like my unpaid parking tickets, as yet another casualty of my protracted laziness.  But as the weather cools, the academic calendar settles in and the Jewish New Year is celebrated, I hereby recommit myself to The Procrastinating Girl. You with me?

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.