the procrastinating girl

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.