the procrastinating girl

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.