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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Hi there.  Remember me?  Yes, it's been an embarrassingly long time between posts.  SInce then we've seen both blinding snowstorms and radiant sunshine.  Gotta love March.  Actually, in my house we do as it's the month of my husband's birthday.  His lot of gifts is usually so fantastic I can't recall a single one from years past as I type.  For number 38, in the worst economy since the Great Depression, I decided to make a statement.  Against much of my better judgment, I bought him the Wii.  Now I realize I am quite late to this party.  But that's fine.  I was never the kid who had something first.  Guess jeans.  Pierced ears.  A full-time job with benefits.  Not that this was about me.  At all.  I was raised on PBS and dominoes.  The closest thing we had to video games was an abacus.  So when we fired up our Wii, I was happy to just sit back and watch.  Yes, that lasted five seconds.  Now all I can do is think about the next time I can sing with Blondie.  I AM a Guitar Hero.  Or is it Heroine?

Gross Positioning System

I am definitely an Oringel.  And it's not just because I kept my name.  Many of my qualities point to my father's side.  One of our hallmarks is that we have zero sense of direction.  My grandfather, who lived to be a very coherent 87, famously drove around Long Island in a twelve-foot Cadillac with a compass adhered to the dashboard.  I don't think he could even find the compass inside that ginormous boat.  Of course now there's more advanced instrumentation to help those of us further down the Oringel foodchain.  I selected the GPS package for my car, in part because it included the back-up camera.  My husband and rear bumper would agree this was a non-negotiable.  But life with a GPS?  I could see!  I could hear!  I could make it to New Jersey without paying tolls!  The problem is, my GPS sucks.  Actually, it majorly sucks.  Like yesterday, we got in the car to drive to the nearby Berkshire mountains.  According to the GPS, we had almost 400 miles and seven hours ahead of us.  A fair assessment.  If we felt like skiing in Quebec.  Frustrated yet again, we ignored the GPS and followed our, yikes, instincts.  And also, in a way, took a lesson from my grandfather.  He would sit way back on that wide leather bench of a seat and arrive whenever he happened to find his destination.  That's what we did.  Just two hours after we left home.

Genetics

I had the rare opportunity to dine last night with my original immediate family.  Seeing all of us gathered around the table, it would take a nanosecond (or an earthworm) to realize that we all share the same DNA.  There are a couple of give-aways.  The first is that we are wee people.  And there is a whole lot of dark and curly going on.  Less obvious is our shared passion for left-ist politics, the natural world and Mel Brooks.  So as I listened to my brother, a man from whom I actually differ in many ways (let's start with the cats), tell how he and his lovely girlfriend Libby made it to the van Gogh exhibit on the very last day it was showing at MOMA, I wondered whether we had something else in common.  He waited on line to enter the museum for 45 minutes with all the other slackers, I mean, reallybusyimportantpeople who made it just under the wire.  If you remember, my family went down a couple months ago and caught the van Gogh mid-stream.  Chalk one for TPG.  But if Ethan is similarly afflicted, maybe this procrastination thing is just in my blood.  Why fight it? 

Independence Day

Obviously we are in the midst of the holiday season, having just thrown out the turkey carcass and now getting ready to trim the tree, spin the dreidl or (insert other holiday-ish activity here).  In my house we are also gearing up for Zoe's birthday-a-palooza.  So why independence day?  Well, I traditionally don't like anything that requires a 'group effort'.  Friends used to regale me with tales from business school of all-nighters spent with their 'teams' working out their 'projects'.  I never even liked having a lab partner.  And after years as a pure singles player, I was forced to switch to doubles on my high school tennis team just because the other girls happened to be ranked on the east coast tour.  Details.  But now that I have been married for over nine years, I have learned that I can't do everything on my own.  So today I just want to say, thanks hon: