I am fully aware that I need to be awake by 4:30am in order to have a shower, look decent for work, and arrive on time. This doesn’t change the fact that, 9 times out of 10, when my alarm clock starts blasting, I will reach over and beat it like Ike beat Tina. Like a teenage boy after he gets his first look at a naked woman. Like a convict...
What I mean to say is – I will pound it quite vigorously and with apparent relish, effectively putting it out of commission and, consequently, I am often late. My alarm clock has now taken so many beatings that the volume won’t stay at one level and the radio stations skip around on their own, likely seeking to dodge the next blow.
Obviously work is my biggest issue since I’m about the furthest thing from a morning person you will find. I sleep like the dead and when woken suddenly, tend to swing first and ask questions later. But my violent tendencies aside (unless you’re into that sort of thing...’sup.), I have issues with time in general.
My boss is in a constant tizzy over my lack of time management skills. “You have got to get here on time”, she says at least once a week. It’s only thanks to her leniency and my apparent charm that I’m able to continue trucking along at a snail’s pace, popping in, breathless and disheveled, with the next excuse on the tip of my tongue.
I like the idea of a schedule; it’s the execution that eludes me. See, I’ve been a top notch procrastinator since I was a child (though I can’t remember a time that I ever willingly missed a meal...). It was generally the mundane, everyday tasks that were neglected – like homework and chores. As an adult its mostly important paperwork, phone calls, making dinner, and other household related things.
It was all well and good when I was putting off the boring tasks that had to be done, but I’ve now started putting off the stuff I enjoy doing. In the past, when there was something I was really looking forward to, I’d jump up and go through all the preparations to get me to my goal as quickly as possible - including vaulting out of bed when the alarm went off. However, my procrastinating has reached an all time high. It is no longer selective.
Take last night for example.
I was texting my would-have-been date from this past weekend. (For those that don’t follow my every move on Twitter, he had to cancel because he and his child came down with strep throat.) We were discussing having dinner together tonight. It was decided that we would catch up this afternoon and if we’re both still available we’ll go, and I will stay in the city at The Grandmother’s house so I don’t have to drive all the way home so late on a work night.
A seemingly simple plan, yes? No! There is a part two that the man has no idea about. Preparations, people! And as soon as we ended our conversation I began laying it all out in my head:
“Ok. Since it’s highly likely that this is going to happen tomorrow night, I need to get moving and get some shit done. Let’s see....laundry! I need those black lace boy shorts. Just in case, it’s not like I plan on removing them or anything, but what if the wind blows my dress up? He should know that even though I have no intention of sleeping with him on the first date, I’m wearing the underwear that says ‘could if I wanted too bitch, HA’!
Um, I need to pack options...clothes to change into after work. I’ll get ready at The Grandmother’s. I’ll already have my hair and makeup done so that won’t take long. Let’s see, feel the legs...wow! That’s shameful. I won’t have time to do it in the morning so as soon as Glee is over it’s time to shower and shave those bad boys. And should I maybe make sure the rest looks good? No. No, if I do that I’ll probably sleep with him. I mean, yes! I should...just in case there’s a freak accident and we end up in the same hospital room and the nurse doesn’t cover my bits. That is a completely valid excuse.
So let’s put it all together now, tick it off on the fingers: Glee, laundry, shower, shave, exfoliate, pack, go to sleep and wake up thirty minutes early in order to have time to do my makeup extra well. Go to work, go to TG’s, model three or four clothing options while TG frowns disapprovingly and asks questions about his religious background, meet him for dinner, go to the bathroom at some point to check nose for boogers, teeth for food, and Tweet about how drunk I’m getting on wine.
Should I write all of this down? Nah...Totally got it.”
However things didn’t exactly happen that way. As soon as Glee was over, I launched into full procrastination mode.
“I’ll just finish this one episode of Mad Men that I was watching before Glee came on. I won’t watch the other two that are on this disk. Just the one.”
A little over two hours later:
“Fucking fuck – its 11:15! Sigh. Oh well, I’ll just set my alarm for 4am. I’ll have plenty of time to do everything in the morning.”
4:30am this morning:
“SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! Fuck you, Tina!”
6:15am this morning:
“SHIT! 15 minutes! SLAM! This is all your fault!”
And that, my friends, is how it is done.
That means that its 11am and I’ve done none of the preparations on my list, other than throwing all of my outfit choices, makeup, and toiletries in a bag and running out the door. On the plus side, I was only four minutes late for work this morning. Unfortunately, I’m now going to TG’s to shower on my lunch break so my hair will look decent by this evening, then going back after work to finish the process. You know, if I was a dude and I didn’t have to go through all of this grooming stuff, I probably wouldn’t be such a procrastinator. Maybe. It’s so tiring!
Anyway, my mother says that there is something mentally wrong with me, that no one can knowingly put off things that are really important without having a screw loose. “You just sit there with your damn book! Get up! Get up! What are you looking at? There’s nothing there! Did you pay that bill? Did you get the clothes out of the dryer? Did you call and make that appointment? Well, did you?!”
“Er...no.”
“WHY NOT?”
“I dunno. I was...hey! Listen to this! Do you hear that? ‘Dun nuh! Dun nuh, dun nuh, dun nuh! I want it with whipped cream on it baby gimmie gimmie gimmie your loooooove!’ OMG, Ma, I love this song!”
“I’m going to kill you.”
Apparently, shocker of shockers, my mother is actually right. Not about killing me, I don’t think she has the stomach for that. But behold this sentence from Wikipedia: “Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological disorder.” Sigh. Of course, I’m forced to believe it because Wikipedia is the internet Bible for gangstas. Wicky wicky.
Unfortunately, though I searched for quite some time, I was unable to find a website that claims procrastination is hereditary. In fact, several of them shockingly claim that there is no possible way it could be. This was most disheartening and I’d all but given up on my plans to print out an article on the subject and share it with my mother. Until I read this sentence:
“Procrastinators often have great difficulty in seeking help, or finding an understanding source of support, due to the stigma and profound misunderstanding surrounding extreme forms of procrastination.”
In your FACE ma! All you had to do was be an understanding source of support, instead of nagging me all the fucking time.
“Why haven’t you found a new therapist? Why can’t you make a stinking appointment with a therapist? Huh, huh, why!”
It’s simple! I can’t, it’s too difficult to seek help! I am doomed to circle the drain of task aversion (including, but not limited to, the task of finding a new therapist) until I’m eventually sucked down into the rusty pipes of underachievement and overwhelming failure. Whereupon I will be committed, someone will finally have done it all for me, and I can blame it all on my father in the therapy sessions they haul me to three times a day in a straight jacket. I win.
Sweet! Lunch time!
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Matriarch
“Well I declare!”
My mother reads aloud from a book she just purchased, a sort of comedic take on the customs, sayings, and mannerisms of Southern women. At least I hope it was a comedic effort. The title boasts of being a “guide”, but silly lessons in manners and a few catch phrases are a paltry substitute for the real deal in front of me.
The Grandmother stands at the stove, knotty fingers deftly dredging pieces of chicken in a flour concoction and transferring them to a popping frying pan. I lean against the door frame, as fascinated as ever by her ease in the kitchen. She laughs as my mother reads, hands flying from plate to pan and back again.
I remember being a girl in this same kitchen, white 50’s style table covered with baking paraphernalia. Those same hands, albeit less spotted with age, placed over mine, kneaded a ball of dough the size of my fat little head. Sunlight poured through flowered curtains and touched the ruffled yellow apron around my waist. Kneeling on a low wooden stool with my grandmother’s bare, capable arms on either side of me, gently guiding me through my first batch of homemade biscuits, I was happy.
I’m happy now too, but there’s a tinge of urgency that wasn’t here all those years ago. I feel time’s increasing pressure on this scene.
The Grandmother’s old sheepdog, Duchess, wanders in and nudges her leg. They are the perfect pair, a vaudeville act in the early afternoon, dancing around each other on arthritic limbs. Duchess is almost completely deaf, yet TG chatters at her incessantly. “Oh Duchess, you poor old girl! Mama loves that girl! Go on now, stop pawing at me, old thing!”
The dog’s facial expression is nothing short of exasperated. I can’t say I blame her. She can’t hear, she’s always tripping over things, and to top it off she’s just received her warm weather shave. Her white fluffy coat, spotted sporadically with reddish brown, is gone, leaving her bare from neck to tail. The hair on top of her head has been trimmed haphazardly and stands up in a way that makes her look like a canine Rod Stewart.
Bored with tangling herself between TG’s legs, she ambles slowly back down the hall where she spends the next 10 minutes lowering herself to the floor, still managing to look haughty in the process. Duchess indeed.
As we eat lunch The Grandmother flutters around the dining room table. Even at holiday dinners it’s impossible to get her to sit down for more than a few minutes. Its part Southern hostess and part OCD. I wonder if there’s a chapter in my mother’s book on that.
“You need to get out in the sunshine, get some good vitamin D in your system.” TG says this to no one in particular as she picks up plates and cups. Any offers to help clear the dishes are always rebuffed.
I’m not an outdoorsy person, much to her chagrin, so she takes my daughter out instead. I watch them from the window, wandering around the well kept backyard, stopping often to examine a new bloom. I can’t hear them, but I know she’s saying the same things she used to say to me at that age in her over enunciated southern drawl. “Look at this beautiful flower! I planted this with my own two hands and my little trowel. Wouldn’t you like to help Grandmother plant more flowers?”
Back when I didn’t abhor dirt she taught me how to loosen the roots on a plant before placing it gently in a hole. We wore brightly colored gardening gloves and carried our small tools about in an old strawberry bucket. Her third husband, Hubert, made me a swing out of a wide board and two thick pieces of rope. It hung from the huge pecan tree, the main focal point of the yard, and I would swing on it for hours. In the summer time, with the flowers and tress in full bloom, you couldn’t tell that it was a tiny backyard in the middle of our buzzing capitol. I would wear my great grandmother’s dress up beads and a flowy skirt and pretend I was Alice in Wonderland, swinging out over my make believe wilderness while my grandmother, in her wide brim gardening hat, was the mad hatter.
When they troop back inside I ask TG if she has any curtains she could spare for my bedroom. I want something long and thick to keep out the light and she has quite the obsession with curtains. She’s always buying them, ripping them apart, and sewing them together to fit her current style.
“Of course I do. Check the back room, there should be a zip bag full of them.”
I find them straight away and take them to the front bedroom. She begins pulling them out and making suggestions. In the end we decide to sew two sets together – pale pink cotton for the liner and a light green lace over top. She’s surprised that I want to start on them immediately.
I dig her sewing machine out and we settle at the dining room table. While the kid watches TV and mom gently snores in the rocker, we set to work. I rip out the old seams and baste a few gathers to make the two pieces fit and she runs each one through her sewing machine, making a place for the rod to go through.
While we work, we chat about the same old things. She lectures me on being more patient and soft spoken. Rather than rile her up, I just smile and nod in agreement.
She knows anyway, even as she’s lecturing, that I’ll never be patient or soft spoken. I’ll never be able to breeze around a kitchen quite the way she does, nor will I ever be able to keep any plant other than a cactus alive for very long. I’ll likely never sew anything more than a hole in a sleeve or a button that’s in danger of falling off. She knows I have a foul mouth and a temper that doesn’t become a lady.
And still she’ll keep telling me, and I’ll keep promising, to be the Southern woman she raised me to be, even though we both know the truth: The most Southern things about me are my accent and my ability to charm the pants off anything that wears them… “When you want to” she always adds.
We don’t quite finish all four curtains before it’s time for us to leave. As I gather my things she promises to have them hemmed and ready for me to pick up after work the next day.
At the door I kiss and hug her goodbye. Sometimes I’m relieved to get away from her lectures and her attention, but not today. Today I’m sorry to go so soon. Today a silly guide for Southern women made me appreciate learning from the real deal, even if I’m not terribly adept at the execution of those lessons.
She cups my face in her hand and gives me a look, one I recognize as mine alone. It’s a touch of amusement, a touch exasperation, a touch pride, and, of course, love. Patting my cheek she says, “Behave yourself, you hear? Be good.”
“I will Grandma”, I say with a smile. She chuckles and moves on to my daughter. I watch them hug and TG smoothes the hair back from her face.
I’m not the praying kind, not even sure if I believe in God at all, but I find myself pleading with something or someone: Please let this woman be around long enough to teach my daughter all the things I can’t.
My mother reads aloud from a book she just purchased, a sort of comedic take on the customs, sayings, and mannerisms of Southern women. At least I hope it was a comedic effort. The title boasts of being a “guide”, but silly lessons in manners and a few catch phrases are a paltry substitute for the real deal in front of me.
The Grandmother stands at the stove, knotty fingers deftly dredging pieces of chicken in a flour concoction and transferring them to a popping frying pan. I lean against the door frame, as fascinated as ever by her ease in the kitchen. She laughs as my mother reads, hands flying from plate to pan and back again.
I remember being a girl in this same kitchen, white 50’s style table covered with baking paraphernalia. Those same hands, albeit less spotted with age, placed over mine, kneaded a ball of dough the size of my fat little head. Sunlight poured through flowered curtains and touched the ruffled yellow apron around my waist. Kneeling on a low wooden stool with my grandmother’s bare, capable arms on either side of me, gently guiding me through my first batch of homemade biscuits, I was happy.
I’m happy now too, but there’s a tinge of urgency that wasn’t here all those years ago. I feel time’s increasing pressure on this scene.
The Grandmother’s old sheepdog, Duchess, wanders in and nudges her leg. They are the perfect pair, a vaudeville act in the early afternoon, dancing around each other on arthritic limbs. Duchess is almost completely deaf, yet TG chatters at her incessantly. “Oh Duchess, you poor old girl! Mama loves that girl! Go on now, stop pawing at me, old thing!”
The dog’s facial expression is nothing short of exasperated. I can’t say I blame her. She can’t hear, she’s always tripping over things, and to top it off she’s just received her warm weather shave. Her white fluffy coat, spotted sporadically with reddish brown, is gone, leaving her bare from neck to tail. The hair on top of her head has been trimmed haphazardly and stands up in a way that makes her look like a canine Rod Stewart.
Bored with tangling herself between TG’s legs, she ambles slowly back down the hall where she spends the next 10 minutes lowering herself to the floor, still managing to look haughty in the process. Duchess indeed.
As we eat lunch The Grandmother flutters around the dining room table. Even at holiday dinners it’s impossible to get her to sit down for more than a few minutes. Its part Southern hostess and part OCD. I wonder if there’s a chapter in my mother’s book on that.
“You need to get out in the sunshine, get some good vitamin D in your system.” TG says this to no one in particular as she picks up plates and cups. Any offers to help clear the dishes are always rebuffed.
I’m not an outdoorsy person, much to her chagrin, so she takes my daughter out instead. I watch them from the window, wandering around the well kept backyard, stopping often to examine a new bloom. I can’t hear them, but I know she’s saying the same things she used to say to me at that age in her over enunciated southern drawl. “Look at this beautiful flower! I planted this with my own two hands and my little trowel. Wouldn’t you like to help Grandmother plant more flowers?”
Back when I didn’t abhor dirt she taught me how to loosen the roots on a plant before placing it gently in a hole. We wore brightly colored gardening gloves and carried our small tools about in an old strawberry bucket. Her third husband, Hubert, made me a swing out of a wide board and two thick pieces of rope. It hung from the huge pecan tree, the main focal point of the yard, and I would swing on it for hours. In the summer time, with the flowers and tress in full bloom, you couldn’t tell that it was a tiny backyard in the middle of our buzzing capitol. I would wear my great grandmother’s dress up beads and a flowy skirt and pretend I was Alice in Wonderland, swinging out over my make believe wilderness while my grandmother, in her wide brim gardening hat, was the mad hatter.
When they troop back inside I ask TG if she has any curtains she could spare for my bedroom. I want something long and thick to keep out the light and she has quite the obsession with curtains. She’s always buying them, ripping them apart, and sewing them together to fit her current style.
“Of course I do. Check the back room, there should be a zip bag full of them.”
I find them straight away and take them to the front bedroom. She begins pulling them out and making suggestions. In the end we decide to sew two sets together – pale pink cotton for the liner and a light green lace over top. She’s surprised that I want to start on them immediately.
I dig her sewing machine out and we settle at the dining room table. While the kid watches TV and mom gently snores in the rocker, we set to work. I rip out the old seams and baste a few gathers to make the two pieces fit and she runs each one through her sewing machine, making a place for the rod to go through.
While we work, we chat about the same old things. She lectures me on being more patient and soft spoken. Rather than rile her up, I just smile and nod in agreement.
She knows anyway, even as she’s lecturing, that I’ll never be patient or soft spoken. I’ll never be able to breeze around a kitchen quite the way she does, nor will I ever be able to keep any plant other than a cactus alive for very long. I’ll likely never sew anything more than a hole in a sleeve or a button that’s in danger of falling off. She knows I have a foul mouth and a temper that doesn’t become a lady.
And still she’ll keep telling me, and I’ll keep promising, to be the Southern woman she raised me to be, even though we both know the truth: The most Southern things about me are my accent and my ability to charm the pants off anything that wears them… “When you want to” she always adds.
We don’t quite finish all four curtains before it’s time for us to leave. As I gather my things she promises to have them hemmed and ready for me to pick up after work the next day.
At the door I kiss and hug her goodbye. Sometimes I’m relieved to get away from her lectures and her attention, but not today. Today I’m sorry to go so soon. Today a silly guide for Southern women made me appreciate learning from the real deal, even if I’m not terribly adept at the execution of those lessons.
She cups my face in her hand and gives me a look, one I recognize as mine alone. It’s a touch of amusement, a touch exasperation, a touch pride, and, of course, love. Patting my cheek she says, “Behave yourself, you hear? Be good.”
“I will Grandma”, I say with a smile. She chuckles and moves on to my daughter. I watch them hug and TG smoothes the hair back from her face.
I’m not the praying kind, not even sure if I believe in God at all, but I find myself pleading with something or someone: Please let this woman be around long enough to teach my daughter all the things I can’t.
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