the procrastinating girl

Cash Advance

There are only a handful of situations which can make a girl like me act and act quickly.  Sick child.  Burning building.  Any Bush up for re-election.   Burning building.  I came face to face with one today though not one as scary as George W. himself.  I was ready to pay at our little hovel of a grocery store in town when I noticed my wallet was gone.  Assuming I had lost it, I naturally called my husband to tell him it had been stolen.  Method aside, this should immediately set in motion a series of calls to MasterCard and visits to the DMV.  I was apoplectic.  THIS I cannot handle.  Literally.  Just as I was talking myself back from the ledge, I played a message on my home machine, a device I use about twice a year.  It was GapKids, a store I visit about twice a year, telling me I left my wallet there yesterday and it was in safe hands.  I immediately hopped in my car and doubled the speed limit, something I do daily, and raced to GapKids to find my wallet with, yes, all my personal items still in tact.  Luckily no one took my $3.87.  Good thing I got there fast.

Camp Out

It has actually snowed more than once on my November birthday.  We are at the mercy of such natural forces to set our biorhythms, as well as a few unnatural ones.  Target's Halloween costumes showed up in July.  Back to school supplies lined the aisles far before then too.  Everything is pushing me to act earlier, faster, quicker.  I had to do about eighteen downward dogs after I got the mail on Friday.  In it was an application from a camp for Sydney.  Not just a friendly notice.  A full-on application for next summer complete with fees, schedules and necessary contact info.  Camp.  The school doors just opened.  I just finished fasting.  I have no idea who these people are, but given who I am, on to the top of my mail pile it went.  And currently sits.  Last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark-style.  Shelved with its mail-like brethren.  It will have to wait.  I'd like to meet her teacher first.

Back to the Future

If I step back, I realize how incredible my town is.  I can get to the Upper West Side in under an hour, but live in what looks like a snapshot of Vermont.  But life with two commuting parents is difficult.  That leaves this question hanging in the air between many of us around town:  What did you used to do?  My used to do sounds decent enough.  I was a freelance writer.  But as I raised my daughters, my used to do evaporated before my eyes, as the magazines I wrote for ceased publication and the whole industry tanked.  Now I used to do it with a whole lot of people.  For years, it was easy to just say no to magazines even as the shock and awe set in.  House & Garden!  Gourmet!?  But as my kids just started school and an iPad entered our house, I felt myself turn a corner.  It's time to open my eyes again to the world that I was used to, even if it's all different now.  So my first act was to go to the library (in the neighboring town) and rip all the little subscription cards out from recent issues on the wall.  I did so as an old man sat in a beat-up leather chair right next to me.  Each time he coughed, out a new one came.  HACKKK (The New Yorker)!  SNNORT (Pyschology Today)!  It was pure cacaphony.  Soon, I was loaded up.  I wasn't proud to defile the library's collection, but inching back toward what I used to be felt long overdue. 

Blue Tooth-less

Much to my chagrin, I was recently forced to give up my beloved Subaru.  The backseat was too tight, ironic as it was a mid-sized SUV and I only have two children who are widely-acknowledged to be quite small.  But out it went.  In came our new Mazda CX-9 boasting all kinds of new automotive toys.  Now, I am not one of those McLosers who walk around never removing their wireless earpieces, but I do enjoy my car talk time.  So when I heard the Mazda came with Bluetooth, I was twitchy.  No more earbud?  I could just talk into the ether and be heard?  Oh life, how I love thee!  Before driving out of the dealership, the salesman entered in my phone's address book and I was set.  Dial Mom.  And there she was.  How is it we don't yet have a Club Med on Mars?  Because the next morning when I hopped into my car boasting a mileage of five, my address book was gone.  Vanished.  Paging Miss Marple.  So now every time I try and make a call I have a contentious conversation with the lilting voice of the Bluetooth woman who tells me my 'options'.  The truth is I have only one.  Deal with my address book so my car stops calling China instead of Chappaqua.

Spacial Relations

In case you haven't noticed, or especially if you have, I've been on a self-imposed hiatus of late.  Actually, exile is more to the point.  With Zoe's school last year a healthy driving distance from our house, which, to be fair, isn't close to anything, I spent most of 2010 criss-crossing the county.  Unable to make it back home during the day, every morning I had to pack as if I were moving to Japan.  With that much rubber to burn and environmentalists to piss off (my brother and father are at the top of the list), one would hope some positive self-reflection would emerge as I bopped my head to the great existentialist Katy Perry and inadvertently tailgated cop cars.  As tank after tank emptied, I realized how much I missed my home, particularly my office.  My space is far more cluttered than the rest of my house and with some items that are decidedly un-office-like.  I don't typically don a blue polka dot toddler-sized raincoat to write.  But I do enjoy my gifted AMY O paperweight.  I guess it's the raincoat and the paperweight combined that make this room so quintessentially me.  Not to rest on that, the raincoat and its brethren are due to exit the premises.  I will get to it.  And I will get back to this. 

Tank Sweat

I live in an interesting town.  One where I have inadvertently purchased a granola bar for $6.50.  Where I pick up my prescriptions alongside Chevy Chase (no, I am not amused that we seem to be on similar amounts of medication).  And where I have a toilet that can only be properly flushed by sticking one's arm up to the elbow into the uncirculated tank water and manually taking care of business.  At first, we went through the formalities of removing and then replacing the porcelain cover each time, keeping the facade of powder room normalcy alive.  No need.  For weeks now, the cover has sat the way we preferred, askew on the bathroom counter.  What a pity we don't regularly entertain heads of state.  But the raw, industrial look just doesn't work in our 1960's center hall colonial.  Just recently it was decided that our toilet should finally move on to plumbing supply heaven.  We only have to wait a few weeks for its replacement.  Wait?  I meant hold it.

Who Dat Girl

It seems like for every humdrum Federer-esque type of championship lately, we are treated to one that is a mark of pure redemption.  The Red Sox had the nerve to win the World Series, beating back decades of shame and forever changing the Earth's rotation on its axis, only to do so again a couple of years later.  And just last night we had the New Orleans Saints wiping away over 40 years of do-nothingness in a single evening.  Does procrastination produce the sweeter victory?  Well, I wouldn't want to be on clean-up in the Ninth Ward this afternoon.  Especially since the party probably just started getting good.  I've actually never been to New Orleans.  I curse myself for not having visited my brother when he lived there, but I was skeptical about what I'd find (not in the city, in his living room).  Now, years later, I am among the millions who call ourselves Saints fans just because we believe a fantastic sports story may lift up the one city that needs it the most.  The Red Sox can bite me.

Photo Finished

The new year is less than two weeks old, but it's already time for a sweeping generalization.  I believe it is out to get me.  Around most corners, there has been what feels like some kind of inexplicable cosmic force slapping me across the cheek.  And I don't do inexplicable cosmic force.  My Sunday was the best example.  With several hours unbelievably to myself, I decided to be efficient.  Right.  I wanted to burn CDs of pictures from the last (mumbled number of) years, then go have prints made and begin assembling albums.  Because, you know, we. don't. have. any.  Upon sitting down in front of my laptop, already totally impressed with myself, I immediately noticed something was quirky with iPhoto.  Things weren't dragging and dropping.  I could drag, but then I couldn't drop.  Then I couldn't export.  Then I could, but I couldn't export enough.  I definitely couldn't burn anything.  But I was about to spontaneously combust.  I called Apple's infamous helpdesk where everyone sounds like they just hopped off a surfboard and picked up the receiver.  The good news is that my pictures are indeed safe.  The bad news is that for now they are safe, but stuck on my laptop.  Although, the more I think about it, I do carry it with me often.  Pictures from our trip to Quebec?  Well, I happen to have them right here!

Decade Deux

Happy new year and more.  I just went to log in to TypePad and not only did I need to re-enter my password, but the entire blogging software system has been updated in my absence.  I'm lucky they will still have me.  We did leave the time zone, and by that I mean the county, for a few days.  The day after Christmas we drove down to Washington DC, really to see my 90-year-old grandmother, but also do some sightseeing.  It was flat-out arctic.  The reflecting pool had completely iced over.  A full-day inside option was needed.  We had done the American History Museum with the First Ladies' gowns the day prior. The Air & Space Museum didn't give me enough air and space.  And an art museum?  We live in New York people.  The answer was clear.  Other kids vacation at DisneyWorld.  Ours go to the Newseum.  We billed it as journalism history!  The first amendment!  Cotton candy!  Or, rather, cafe desserts from Wolfgang Puck!  So was I surprised when Zoe wasn't as ecstatic as I was to see the actual door the Watergate burglars taped open at the DNC headquarters?  Hardly.  But she could have faked it.  I mean, we were in Washington. 

Press Pause

It seems like a millennium ago that I was staring at my ceiling absolutely petrified of giving birth.  I thought I was going to die.  Not really.  But I was scared.  Scared shitless.  My husband usually produced a calming rational counterpoint about how if the women confined to huts in the Afghan desert could do it, I would survive in a cush Westchester hospital with an anesthesiologist wearing an electric shock collar who magically appeared with drugs whenever I pushed a button.  Whatever.  Scared shitless.  So I saw a therapist and she helped me work through some of my fears.  Voila.  Two daughters later, each requiring 2.5 hours of pushing, my fear of doctors was improved, but not cured.  So now when I must see my OB/GYN (actually, nix the OB part as this shop is closed), I still need some prodding.  And there's even less incentive when the appointment must be scheduled light years in advance.  My doctor is booking for the summer.  What will I be doing this July 6th at 10am?  I don't know, maybe I'll hop in my hovercraft over to the Mount Kisco Medical Group.  But I did feel a little fire when I saw that my GYN was just listed in Westchester Magazine's best doctors issue.  Of course I also saw that her specialty is menopause issues.  For that, I can wait.