Tuesday, January 26, 2010

How to Procrastinate


On Sunday I packed up my car and drove 8 hours south to Florida... with my 17 month old... and without my husband. I had a few people tell me that I was crazy and a few people tell me I was brave. Mostly I was just really nervous. Thankfully, my son did amazing on the trip and has done great since we got here two days ago. Our first two nights were spent at my in-laws house. We had a very nice visit, although it was strange to be there without my husband! Today, we picked my Mom up at the airport and drove to my Grandparents retirement community. My Mom, my son and myself are staying in a studio apartment here in the complex. This should prove interesting in the evenings for my son going to sleep. It's now an hour and forty five minutes past his bed time and I can still hear him talking. He's kind of around the corner from where my Mom and I are sitting, but I know he knows we are out here. It's hard not having a separate bedroom for him, but this is still bigger than a hotel room. It almost feels like the clicking on my laptop keys is too loud! I know I should sit here and read quietly, but I've been in withdrawal not being able to get on the Internet for two days and most of all, not be able to update my blog!

So, in preparation for my trip, I did a few things in advance on my list and then I carefully planned and brought the other things with me. The big project that I'll be tackling this week is making a home management binder. I'm going to work on that during nap times. I'll post my "how to" when I finish it. It will be nice this week not to worry about cleaning my house during nap times and just focus on getting some organizing done.

Okay. Finally... the item I am crossing off the list today... taking clothes to the dry cleaners. First of all, as a general rule, I try not to buy anything that needs to be dry cleaned. I know myself well enough to know that it's not going to make it there in a timely manner, and I'm going to cringe when I have to pay for it. However, despite my best efforts, we had accumulated a total of ten pieces that needed to be dry cleaned. I had put them all in a trash bag and put the bag in the trunk of my car until I could afford to take it to the cleaners. I was still driving around with it in the trunk when we moved into our house in July. It got moved inside because we needed the trunk space and has been sitting in our future office (current random storage room) ever since.

On Saturday, I brought that bag to the cleaners! On the drive there, I was trying to remember exactly when I packed that bag. I knew it was in the winter, after Christmas, so it must have been last year, because we were in our rental house. Right. A year. Not TOO bad! Then I started thinking 'was it only a year, or has it been two...?' Lord help me. Surely I wasn't driving around with a bag of dry cleaning for TWO YEARS!!! Right? RIGHT???!!! When I got inside, I could feel something inside the pocket of my husband's suit coat. It was the program from his Grandfather's funeral. From June, 2007.

TWO YEARS????!! Every time I have these moments I just have to remind myself not to dwell on why I have such an incredible procrastination problem, but just to focus on the fact that I'm doing something about it now. I would probably be more successful writing a blog about how to procrastinate. I've heard you should always write about what you know. At least I'm finally breaking the bad habits. But, man, am I going to cringe at that dry cleaning bill! (good thing I had a coupon for 30% off!)

2 comments:

  1. Hi Colleen, I think you are very brave to drive alone 8 hours with your 17 month old. I used to do things like that when I was younger and did not give it a second thought. As I have gotten older I think my braveness has waned. :) Procrastination is another thing that I am familiar with. I am very good at it myself. I don't know why I wait until the last minute and the thing is it seems I do my best work when I am under pressure. (go figure) Your story of the dry cleaning made me LOL. That might be classified as procrastination or maybe just a memory lapse. :)

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  2. I'm glad your drive went okay!

    You might want to check around you and see if there's a budget dry cleaning place. When I lived in Utah there was somewhere that would do everything for $2 a piece! Much less painful than most places. Also if things aren't really "dirty" with spots and such, you can freshen them up with the home dry cleaning kits you toss in the dryer. I've had pretty good success with them.

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