THE ART OF PROCRASTINATION

This is what procrastination looks like.

If you could see me now – sitting at my computer desk, typing merrily away – you would probably think I was ‘getting stuff done’.  This is not exactly wrong.  I am writing this blog, and that is legally ‘stuff’, but it’s not on my Things To Do list.  ‘Purge the office’ is on my Things To Do list, but that’s not what I’m doing, is it?  I am procrastinating.

I am not an aggressive hoarder.  I don’t go and purposely buy or collect objects that will need storage or dusting.  Actually, I am loath to buy anything because I will then be responsible for its storage and cleaning.  Stuff seems to follow me home anyway.  

My problem is that no matter how things come into my possession I am unable to discard them.  The reasons for this are many: I don’t want to be responsible for overflowing landfills, I don’t like to waste anything, and if I throw it away I will almost for sure need it within the next two week period.  I blame my parents really. This “waste not, want not” dilemma is a product of being raised by people who lived through the great depression and who never threw anything out.  I stand by this theory even though my own children don’t seem to have picked up the tendency from me.  Maybe it’s one of those things that skips a generation every once in a while.

At any rate ... the thing that is on my Things To Do list is to clear out this office and wash and paint the walls before the new flooring goes down.  There is a deadline.  I have a little over a month, and it’s going to take all of that because I keep finding more pleasant things to do.  When it comes to the tedious work of going through shelves of stuff I can’t even remember seeing before almost anything is more pleasant.  Oh yeah, that reminds me – I need to make a dentist appointment.

I have made some headway.  The filing cabinets now only hold stuff that pertain to our lives in the 21^st Century.  That required more than two days of my life and to celebrate that milestone I immediately took up garden cleanup because it was outside and the decisions of keep or discard are so much easier when the options are ‘weeds’ or ‘vegetables’.

Then, with the flimsy excuse of not having a ladder so obviously I couldn’t wash the walls, I ignored the office for another two weeks.  Two days ago the ladder came back; so much for that dodge.  I’ve spent this morning sorting through more papers, filling a box of ancient (at least 3 years old) electronics to be recycled, and pondering what to do with a whole stash of hockey/curling/karate/chess trophies.  I know their owners will tell me to throw them out, which lands me back in the landfill/waste guilt quandary.  Even I know that no one will ever actually need them.

I need a furniture trolley.  I need a drill to take down some shelving.  I need drywall tape and tools to fix cracks and nail holes.  These ‘needs’ are another clever device of the master procrastinator, meant to give the false impression that no work can progress without these items.  It’s pretty temping to let this job run on for even longer, but do I really want to be painting when I can’t open the windows?  And there is that deadline of early November ...

So, I will finish up this blog.  Then go make supper.  Then tidy up the rest of the house.  Then call it a day. 

But, I swear, on a stack of bibles, that I will be back in this hoarding center tomorrow morning to tackle the shelves in another cabinet.  If I do a couple hours per day for the next week I will eventually get to the painting part.  

If all goes according to plan you won’t be hearing from me in a while.  The computer will have to be unplugged and moved out of the way, thus removing the temptation to use it as a ‘reason’ to not complete the purge. 

In my next life I’m coming back as a millionaire so I can hire this done.

 

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

“Look at mommy’s sad, sad flowers.”

My three year old granddaughter and I were on a tour around their yard yesterday and she was pointing out items of note. 

She and her brothers had already taken me to see the chickens and we had watched as the birds revelled in the fresh green grass we had thrown over the fence for them.

From there we had wandered over to where their mom had plunked her newest planter – an ancient truck (well, it’s older than me).  To date, all she has planted there is a small maple tree but next year there will be all kinds of flowers spilling out of its box.  It’s the kind of thing you can do when you have a huge rural yard and an imagination.

Onward we had explored, through some trees to the edge of a pond where everyone had a turn at throwing rocks in to the slimy green water. The nine year old was the only one getting his rocks in far enough away not to get any stinky backsplash.  The six year old kept wondering why his rocks weren’t going as far and why he kept getting wet.  It generally took the three year old three throws per rock to even get it wet.  Grandma decided it was time to move on again before we all got too messy.

The next stop was down by their signpost and garden.  The little ones rearranged some of the rocks as the eldest and I reminisced about the day we all erected the sign and which pieces of machinery were needed for the job.  I trusted him on his list; he is definitely the expert in that field.

Then it was back to their dad’s shop to show all the improvements that have been made to it and how neat all the tools were arranged in the tool boxes.  I was also given an in depth report on what they were fixing on his dad’s quad.  It was way over my head but I have no doubt he knew what he was talking about.

That took us back to the house and as we walked by what had been a pretty garden full of flowers until Jack Frost had shown up, the little girl pointed out the sadness of what he had left in his wake.  I agreed with her.  I too have gardens full of this particular sadness.

Although there are some species that can handle a few degrees of frost, most of the beauties are done for the year.  The dantura leaves and flowers droop to the ground displaying the spikey seed pods they’ve been hiding all summer.  Marigold flowers retain their brilliant yellows and oranges but the leaves and stems go black.  Cosmos go from ferny and fresh to ugly skeletons, and dahlias transition from lush, blossom covered shrubs to ruined, blackish, rotting messes overnight.  On the other hand, petunias and asters would seem to have antifreeze in the veins – they are doing just fine.

 But, as my very wise granddaughter observed, summer is over.

All is not lost though, the beauty and fun of autumn has just begun!

We spent the rest of the afternoon raking up poplar leaves so that they could run and jump and slide through them with me videoing every single award-winning athletic feat.  The sun was warm on our shoulders, the leaves crunchy beneath our feet.  There was tree climbing and posed pictures amongst the bright red crab apples and a grand finale of the tree of them sitting in the pile of leaves and tossing them into the air, again to satisfy Grandma’s wish for photographs.  They turned out perfect – each of their faces showing the fun they were having – even once or twice in the same picture!

We transitioned back to summer once more to end off the afternoon and laid a picnic blanket out on the lawn to enjoy freezie pops and fruit before the evening chill moved in on us, something that September can do in the blink of an eye, and began the conversation on whose pumpkin was the biggest to carve for Halloween.

And the year moves on ...

 

 

UP TO MY OLD TRICKS

I’m up to my old tricks again. 

Normally I live a lackadaisical kind of existence.  There’s always work to do ... and I get around to most of it in due time.  I admire people who take on spring cleaning and don’t stop till the whole house is clean, top to bottom.  The walls, the ceilings, the closets, the floors and windows, the curtains and all the bedding – I am in awe of such perseverance.  Not only do they get it done in the spring, but in the same spring that they started it in.  Totally out of my league.

I have a sister who does this, proving beyond a doubt that this tendency is not genetic.

Me?  I do get around to cleaning, but it’s only on a piecemeal basis.  It doesn’t happen because it’s spring or has any other arbitrary date or set launch criteria.  My modus operandi is to take a scrub cloth to a dirty light switch plate, realize that makes the wall look dirty so I wash that too, which shows how dirty the ceiling is.  Before you know it I’ve painted the main part of the house and ordered new curtains for the living room. 

Well, that’s an exaggeration.  That all takes a week or two but you get the picture – random start point, hap hazard method, at least three days of “What was I thinking?” and then the finished product ... not to be touched again for another five years.  If that.

Otherwise, my only other house cleaning motivation is being given a deadline.  I perform well under pressure.  I can get stuff done when I know there is an end date to aim for.  Like company.  I have company coming.

This means there is a lot to do in a short time.  It calls for my secret weapon: THE TO DO LIST.

This is where the tricky part comes in.  Out comes the pen and paper and I catalogue all the things that need to be done before I let guests into my version of domestic bliss.  There are all the regulars: wash the floors, make the beds up fresh, dust the furniture, do a little baking.  These are the things that have to be done.

But, because I have a deadline and I know that pressure helps me get things done I also add things like ‘wash the windows’ and ‘sweep the cobwebs off the deck’.  You know, things that need to be done anyway so let’s squeeze them in.

By this time I’m feeling very accomplished and add a flourish of pie-in-the-sky items ... ‘weed the vegetable garden’ and ‘clean the garage’.  I mean, get serious!  That ain’t never going to happen in the next month, let alone ten days.

So I talk myself down and write down more reasonable and useful demands on my time ... ‘clean out the fridge’ and ‘de-lime the shower’.  And start in on the work at hand.

The trouble is that these jobs are slow going, and my sense of integrity won’t allow me to cross them off the list until they are COMPLETELY done.  Meanwhile there are other things that are getting done all along, but they’re not on the list.  By mid day, needing a sense of accomplishment, I add things like ‘hang clothes on the line’ and ‘dig potatoes for supper’ to my list just so I can stroke them off as done.  It’s a form of legitimate cheating, and as old as the hills.  A loophole, if you will.

So far today I have been able to cross off three jobs – two actual worthwhile tasks and one tacky add-on ‘go for groceries and water’ that doesn’t count for anything because I would have to do it anyway.  The bonus is that I’m not done yet.  Writing this blog is a genuine, bona fide item on my list and I am now finished it.  *stroke*

Better yet, when I’m done obliterating that one off my list it will be cool enough to go out and tackle the spider’s webs on the deck. 

Baby, I’m on a role!

 

                                                SEASON OF COMPLETION

                                                      

       Take a deep breath, and hold it.  Push yourself a little.  This isn’t a contest or a test but when your chest starts to feel tight and uncomfortable make yourself go another five seconds, then let it all go in a big easy sigh.  Breathe out, and relax. 

       Maybe you feel a little dizzy but the physiological effect this has on your body is pleasant, you will likely feel a slightly heightened sense of awareness.  Sounds are crisper, colours are brighter, the air in your next breath is more refreshing.  On some obscure scale of measurement your life is somehow richer.

       This is the effect that autumn has on me. 

       Spring gets a lot of attention.  We can’t wait to see the winter gone.  The snow that looked so white and pure when it first fell is dirty and unwelcome by the time of spring equinox.  We want it gone, and replaced with colour.  We want green grass and green trees.  And when that isn’t enough we want flowers of every hue.  We want to see life and growth.  We find ourselves standing at the edge of our gardens waiting for the first radishes and lettuce.  As pleasant as spring is though, it doesn’t last long; summer comes along and pushes us forward.

       The sun worshipers appear in July.  No temperature is too high for them, no day too hot, no sky too dazzling.  It is a season of extremes; Mother Nature has her biggest and best hissy fits now, stirring heat and humidity into ferocious storms and spilling these tantrums of hers across the prairies, leaving us to scramble for shelter and pick up the pieces when she’s done.  She is a talented artist and our summer sky is her palette; night or day she shows us what she is made of, and I admit I am impressed with the work she does during her “summer period”, but it’s not her best work.

       The sheer force of July leaves me worn out.  I find myself hiding out in my house, not wanting to feel the bite of that glaring sun on my skin.  The days roll on, the wild flowers transition from pretty pink roses at the edge of the road to the thistles and goldenrod of late summer, waving from the ditches.  Heat shimmers up in waves from the earth’s surface and dust devils do their dizzy dance during late August afternoons. 

       Then one morning the world feels different and you realize that Mother Nature has slipped into something more comfortable.  The countryside gives a great sigh of relief: and somehow the sounds are a little crisper, the colours more vibrant, the air you breathe, perfumed with the scent of ripe apples, is exquisite.  Welcome to the season of completion. 

       The year is wrapping up its production: fields of grain ripen before our eyes, gardeners are doing their best to stay ahead of ripening tomatoes and cucumbers, and this spring’s baby calves are almost as big as their mothers.  Juvenile hummingbirds have joined rival gangs and are waging noisy battles over ownership of the feeders.  At the moment sugar water is disappearing at an alarming rate but it won’t be long and they will be gone.  The geese will wait a few more weeks and then follow the tiny warriors south.

      School buses will come out of hiding, adding their bright orange to the festive fall display.  Harvest machinery is already venturing out, searching for fields that are ready to go. It won’t be long before harvest fills the air with dust; grain dust from the combines and road dust from the trucks hauling grain.  Sometimes the dust just hangs in mid air creating the magical illusion of monster-sized machinery hovering weightlessly over unseen ground.  Crickets add their background music.

       Brilliantly coloured leaves will scatter across green lawns like so many pieces of gold, and the very air is saturated with ripeness.  The sharp scent of frost-nipped plant life will fill our senses and hold promise of nutrients for next year’s flowers.  The sun goes down earlier every night.

       One by one lids will slam down over grain bins full of the year’s bounty.  Pickles made now will be ready to serve for Thanksgiving dinner.  We will wonder again how so much time could have slipped past on us, another autumn has come and gone. 

       It’s time for a few more sighs:  one of relief because all the hard work of the growing season is done, and another one of regret because it will be three quarters of a year before autumn comes to us once more.  And, although there is no way to prove it, having experienced autumn one more time, our lives are somehow richer than they were before.

FROM THE KETTLE TO THE FIRE

 

Being as I am married to a farmer the concept of holiday long weekends is meaningless to me.  On the May long weekend ‘we’ are seeding.  On the July long weekend ‘we’ are spraying or haying.  On the August long weekend ‘we’ are baling or preparing for harvest – which is something that can wipe out both Labour Day and Thanksgiving depending on the weather Mother Nature hands out.

 

In my next life I hope to find a husband who understands the concept of “holidays”.  Wish me luck.

 

Meanwhile though, in my present life, I am with a farmer.   And we have a large garden.  I planted it on the May long weekend and have been weeding it ever since.  For the past three weeks I have also been picking berries and either freezing them or making jam.  Now I have peas and beans to deal with I have made the executive decision to gift the rest of the berries to the birds.  The corn, zucchini and spaghetti squash are looming on the horizon, thank goodness the carrots, beets, and potatoes are root vegetables and can wait.  Ain’t nobody got time for them this time of the year.

 

As my brain roused itself out of sleep this morning I began the usual circuit of pending jobs on my ‘to do’ list.  I was on my own for the day because the farmer had one more field to swath ... what should I do with it?  It was about this time that it occurred to me that this was one of those holiday Mondays and maybe I should go a little crazy and do something new and exciting.

 

Something outside the box, at least.

 

Speaking of boxes ... there was that one job.  I suppressed a shudder.  Apparently I am capable of spoiling a holiday all on my own. 

 

There’s this one room in my house – the one I’m sitting in right now, as a matter of fact – that needs serious intervention.  The most obvious problem is the filthy, rundown carpet.  It has to go.  It was the wrong thing to put in an office anyway.  What it needs is laminate flooring.  I even have a son-in-law who is just itching to do the job, but as much as I would love new flooring I dread what that means.  This room is also home to filing cabinets and desks and cupboards, all near to exploding with papers that need to be sorted, then saved or destroyed; a painfully slow process that I have been putting off for years.  It seems that I excel at storing things in a filing cabinet (Not well, or organized in any recognizable fashion, you understand ... just in a file, in a drawer, in the cabinet), but I really suck at weeding anything back out of it. 

 

My dream of new flooring hinged on being able to move the furniture, though.  I heaved a huge sigh of resignation and flipped back the blankets.  I sure do know how to par-tay!

 

I have to say that once I got going on my project it became more fun.  At the bottom of one drawer I found our very first passports – printed so that we could take a cruise for our honeymoon.  We look like such kids!  I also have a file in each of the kids’ names – some legal papers, some tax returns, and in the #1 son’s file is the full and complete correspondence I received from him while he was out of the country for 13 months when he was 19: five letters, less than a page long.  They should really be in a safe deposit box; they are that rare and precious.

 

I came across our marriage certificate ... that would have been handy a couple months ago when I was applying for my pension ... and other artifacts from the past:  bills of sale for various machinery we have owned, registration papers for bulls long dead, mineral rights lease agreements from companies that don’t exist anymore.  But the bulk of my mission was to fill a cardboard box with ancient NISA papers, folders of expired legal correspondence, and owner’s manuals for household appliances long relegated to a dump somewhere – like, back when dumps were still a thing.

 

Eight hours later there was a new, small patch of my grungy carpet showing.  I had made some headway on this fun holiday I had been on.  Also, I had a huge box of the kind of papers that can’t be thrown in the garbage; they have too much personal information on them to go anywhere but a burning barrel.

 

So that will be my next job.  I’ve gone from boiling water to blanche vegetables yesterday to feeding a paper fire tomorrow.  And then right back into the next round of pea picking.  I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think this is how holiday Mondays are supposed to go.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

I spend a lot of my time these days out in my garden cheering on my flowers and vegetables.  It seems to be working better than usual this summer but I better not take all the credit – I’m thinking Mother Nature considers her rain and heat units have more of an effect than my positive thoughts.  I say let her take the credit – no one wants her in a bad mood.

Mind you, I do spend some significant time muttering bad things about her under my breath while I’m out there.  It’s not all happy thoughts and pixie dust while I wander up and down the rows of beans.  A good portion of my garden time is spent in hand-to-hand combat with portulaca, redroot pigweed, and lamb’s quarter, to name a few.  (There are many others that I don’t know the name of, but dislike every bit as much.)  While I understand Mother Nature loves all of her plants equally, I wish she would grow her riff-raff somewhere far away from my peas and carrots.

You see, I have this misbegotten and unrealistic vision of a magazine worthy garden.  In my head I picture perfect rows of perfect germination in perfect plant density.  Also, the rows are perfectly straight, but that’s more my husband’s dream than my own.  My seeding equipment doesn’t have GPS like his does.

I also envision that the only plants growing out there should be the ones I planted.  I require that my vegetables enjoy sovereignty over the domain I have given them.  It is only their green growth that I want to see; that, and clean, weed-free black dirt between the rows.  There should not be any thistles or dandelions.  Wayward canola and flax spill-over from the grain bins is not allowed.  Quack grass and foxtail are banned as well. 

I am not winning.

But I do try.  I dedicate a few hours each day to eliminating the enemy.  I start when it’s still coolish, when the horse and deer flies show up I know it’s time to quit.  This morning the flies were running a little late; I make have baked a few brain cells. 

Maybe that’s what gave birth to this episode of self examination I’ve been wrestling with for the rest of the day.  It has occurred to me that I am prejudiced.  I try to segregate the plants that I want from the plants that I don’t want.  I banish (or try to) the unwanted, going to the extreme of maiming or killing them every chance I get.  Not because they are not strong and healthy.  Not because they are not edible or nutritious (they say portulaca and lamb’s quarter are both).  Not because they can’t be pretty in their own way.  No, the only reason they have been placed on a hit list is because I have appointed myself judge and jury over them.  In this time of social equality and awareness this feels a little awkward, I can tell you.

It’s mostly about my pride.  I love the way the rows look when the weeds are all gone.  It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to claim this implausible and unbalanced microworld I have created at the cost of so many undesirables.

It’s a fleeting thing though.  Gardening season is about to move on to the next stage – harvesting.  There are only so many hours to the day and picking a preserving will now take over.  Any weeds that have dodged death so far will now shift into high seed-forming gear and I will be right back where I started from next spring.  Mother Nature wins again.

A POUND OF GROUND

I’m facing one of my standard dilemmas at the moment; the old ‘what to make for supper’ quandary.  And, as I stare at it thawing in the sink, I find myself brain dead.

Now, now!  Be kind!  I’m not always brain dead.  I do have moments of startling clarity – like two hours after a lovely/ awkward conversation with a person whose name I have just finally remembered – but after more than a half century of continually needing to come up with supper menus, well that part of my brain is wearing a little thin.

It’s not always like this.  Approximately two years ago when my deep freeze had run dry of all packages labeled ‘ground beef’ I could think of 1001 recipes I wanted to make with hamburger.  The possibilities were endless ... and useless, because all I had to work with was pork roasts and moose sausage.  I wish I had written some of those fantastic ideas down at the time.  Sure could use them this afternoon.

I suppose I could barbeque patties ... again ... but I don’t think I have any buns.

There are other choices downstairs in the deepfreeze.  It’s just that if I don’t keep the different cuts of meat going down at the same rate I pay the price with nothing but short ribs and chuck roasts for the last two months before we can order another half beef.  Better to stick to some kind of rotation.  Besides, on these really stinking hot days, one of the nicest places to hang out is in the dark, cool basement staring into the depths of the freezer.  Even when I know I’m going to end up with my pound of ground, it can take me a good five minutes to retrieve the package.

What about a pot of chili?  Nah, that’s a meal for a cold winter’s night.

I would ask Google for help but I’m pretty sure one of these times the response is going to be “Not you again!”  I’ve scrolled through pages of their ideas and it’s never any help.  The choices are either the same as what I already know or they list ingredients not found in the western world, let alone my spice cupboard.

Meat loaf?  Lasagna?  Spaghetti sauce?

Time is running out here.  The deciding time period must soon come to an end to accommodate the actual cooking time.

I guess while I’m burning through the last minutes of pre-prep time I could check out the garden for veggie choices.  Oh hey!  In my vexation over the meat part of the meal I forgot that this is gardening season.  There is Swiss chard out there, and fresh lettuce, radishes, and strawberries for dessert.  This changes everything!  When the veggies start rolling in the protein dish takes a back seat around here.  I can’t skip it out completely but if I do nothing more that brown it up with some salt and pepper it still passes muster.

The pressure is totally off now.  I think it will be hamburgers in mushroom gravy ... maybe there’s new baby potatoes out there too ...