the procrastinating girl

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.

The $64,000 Question

I absolutely LOVE Liz Phair's song Why Can't I?  You'd like to think I first heard it at some indie rock-ish Lillith Fair-y kind of open air concert.  Actually, I think it was used in a Mandy Moore movie trailer.  But it came on the radio (quite possibly Hot 97) again today and made me think about the endless little ways I could answer Liz's question, like, why can't I:

- ever, EVER find a working pen
- go 24 hours without being completely positive that I've lost my cell phone
- remember to call my 89-year-old Grandma every Sunday
- get to Costco more than once every seven years (actual stat)
- bring myself to throw out a tube of toothpaste
- make good on outstanding parking tickets (um, hypothetically speaking)
- go more than two weeks without breaking a chip clip
- locate any of the 50 ponytail holders that I bought in bulk so I'd never have to buy them again
And so on...

Teeing Off

For the last couple of days, I have been glued to coverage about Tiger's win at the US Open.  It's not that I love watching golf.  I love watching him win.  I love the sheer catharsis of the fist pump, the caddy bear hug, the whole thing.  And I would love to have a job where it was socially acceptable to go bananas with emotion if the situation called for it.  Of course, my situation doesn't exactly have a sudden death 19th hole.  Today in the car on the way to camp, Zoe ate three string cheeses and learned all the words to I Kissed a Girl by Katy Perry.  Not exactly my Cuba Gooding Jr. moment.  But it's so in me.  Two nights ago, I was sitting on my couch eating Breyer's Cherry Vanilla completely undone by yet another rerun of Jennifer Hudson's show-stopping scene in the middle of Dreamgirls.  Never mind the first time around in the theater.  Hooting.  Hollering.  Yes, that's me down in front.  So, realistically, I am not winning an Oscar or lifting the Wimbledon trophy over my head, but maybe the same rules can apply to my little disorganized corner of the world.  This afternoon, I stood up to a pushy, bald salesman and got all my money back for a pair of overpriced tennis sneakers that I had to return by today or I would be stuck with store credit.  And it was raining.  Come on, where is the roar of the crowd??

Radio Free Bedford

It's a myth that we procrastinators put off only those tasks that don't matter to us.  When I got my new deep bronze (NOT brown) Subaru Tribeca last summer, I was very excited that it included a free three-month trial subscription of XM radio.  I'm a little ADD when it comes to channel changing and this brought my listening options to a whole new level.  My passengers didn't exactly match my enthusiasm.  But, come on, an entire station devoted to retro 80's pop on channel 8?  The top 20 hits on 20?  I was addicted immediately.  I also knew that I needed to call with my credit card info or eventually my service would be turned off.  It wasn't expensive, it was just something I needed to do.  The weeks ticked by.  Then that fateful morning came when I turned my key in the ignition and... crickets.  No classic rock on 49 or acoustic rock on 50.  Nothing.  That was seven long months ago.  Then, in today's mail, I got a special promotion saying that my beloved XM is being turned back on!  I am getting three weeks for free and can join now at a discounted rate.   I certainly appreciate second chances.  Almost as much as show tunes on 28.

Time Warp

It's a little counterintuitive that someone prone to procrastinating would be completely Type A about being on time.  But I am.  Anyone who has had to meet me anywhere knows this.  Just ask my friend Linda who I missed at her house several days ago.  I mean, we had said 1:30... not 1:34.  The part where my procrastinating self conflicts with my punctual self caught up with me last night.  We had a power outage, just because the wind blew too hard, leaving me without a functioning clock upstairs.  How?  Here's the embarrassing truth.  I've had the clock on my nightstand since 7th grade.  It's cheesy pink plastic, has moving hands and plays an electronica version of 'Here Comes the Sun'.  The batteries ran out last year and I still haven't replaced them.  No, I don't think I wake up at 11:23am, but I realize it's kind of odd.  I did buy a shiny, old-fashioned-looking alarm clock as its replacement, but had to stick it in the bathroom because the ticking drove me nuts.  That one konked out last month.  It now reads 7:38.  My running watch, which I used to wear religiously, has been banished to the bathroom as well, untouched since daylight savings time.  It's still one hour off. The last timepieces we have upstairs are powered by, yes, electricity and were left blank by the storm.   So there I was, left in a chronological vacuum.  And for the first time in a long time, I fell asleep simply because I was tired.

Look, I have a blog

Ok, so it's not the parting of the Red Sea... But since my blog is based on this life-long personality flaw, it's kind of a miracle that I exercised my limited follow-through skills to get it up and running. So here it is, or rather, will be, a chronicle of what I don't do... for no good reason other than my own inertia. I'm hoping maybe the public humiliation will force me into a new, more organized state of being. People say blogging is powerful. Can it undo 36 years of saving everything until the very last minute? We shall see...