Doing it Wrong

Not Procrastinating

I'm in the throes of Not Procrastinating which, it turns out, is really awesome because you get this amazing virtuous thrill for Doing Things You Should Totally Just Be Doing Because You're an Adult You Idiot AND you can face up to OTHER things and go, 'oh, I would, but you know, right now I can't because I'm NOT PROCRASTINATING.'

I mean, the downside is I'm actually having to sort through that box of crap that's been sitting there for six weeks, but I'm willing to over look that because there's this fabulous Not Procrastinating zen thing you can do where you start doing ONE horrible task and you suddenly look up and see the heap of laundry you put there this morning and you go all moral and upstanding and abandon the horrible task to do the laundry RIGHT THIS MINUTE because that's even MORE not procrastinating and so you win at both putting off the horrible task AND not procrastinating. So far I've managed to do the laundry, give myself a pedicure and sort through the back email on my spam email account (the one I only keep for registering for stuff because I totally know it'll collect the spam) while happily ignoring the now unpacked contents of that box of crap.

I am SO GOOD at this Not Procrastinating stuff.

NB - I wrote a blog post too! I'm amazing.

Really Random Sunday

I've spent the week doing almost all the things I've been procrastinating for the past two months. In doing so I realized that for two months I've been gradually increasing my stress level to monumental proportions and the result is that when I actually DO the thing I've been putting off (and thus endowing with gradually more paranoid and disproportionate fears about what could happen if they AREN'T done and worse - what will go tragically wrong when I try to do them) I get this fabulous rush of victory, relief and accomplishment. Yesterday I mailed two envelopes - AND I WON THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD!

However the stress lasted two months and the thrill only about four hours (but it was a great four hours) so I have decided to try and NOT procrastinate for a change, or at least minimize the procrastination wherever possible. Which is why I'm posting - because posting is not procrastinating at all - really not because I can't do the stuff I'm no-longer-procrastinating because it's Sunday and everything's closed - it's actually doing something I mean to do (post) which I was going to put off because I didn't want to whine about freaking out about all my upcoming major important change and yet everything else I could think of to write about was trivial and kind of ridiculous.

Hence Really Random Sunday - the pathetic and stupid things I've thought of posting on during the past week:

1. It's okay that I'm allergic to opiates and thus will never be able to be a serious drug addict because I get the same effect at the recycling station. Every time I go to throw the glass bottles in the skip I am convinced I will also throw in my car keys, which I have clutched in my hot little bottle-throwing hand, and that I'll have to leap in and swim through acres of broken glass or else I will be forever stranded at the recycling station in the creepy abandoned mall parking lot. And every time I tell myself that I should just put the damn keys in my pocket but I keep holding them anyway. Life on the edge, baby. Can't tell ME that's not the same as mainlining heroin.

2. It's probably a good thing that never did that explore-your-body with a mirror thing, that I read all women should totally do, when I was a Mormon. Because I would probably have been too modest to do it naked so I would have had to wear modesty panties and then all I would have learned is how to identify myself if I ever show up on the internet as a secretly taken up-skirt camera shot. At least now I won't know that I've been anonymously exposed.

3. One of my deepest shames is that I spent about 6 months as a man on a forum. I mean, I didn't intend to, but it was the first time I'd participated on a forum and I didn't know how to pick a forum name so the first umpty thousand billion names I picked were all taken. In desperation I randomly started trying any name I could think of and one of them was free so I took it. Then after I'd been participating for a while a bunch of people tried to guess 'real life' things about the participants and they all agreed I was a man because of my random name, and for some reason I was being paranoid about privacy and so I didn't contradict them and then it snowballed so for six months I had a whole forum alter-ego as a man. What's worse, I realized one of the women had falled in love with male-forum-me so I had to invent a live-in girlfriend to whom I proposed and then we moved to New Zealand and my now-fiancee asked me to spend more time with her so I stopped participating on the forum. I still feel horrible about that and since then I've tried to be really, really careful about honesty online. [My fiancee, by the way, was ginger, highly educated and loved to salt water kayak. I may have been a lying mc liarpants, but I was CREATIVE about it]

 

The Nest! It is Empty! [imagine with dramatic pointing]

So!

I married off one of my kids thereby acquiring another one and thus far unless he proves to by a lycanthrope or a secret and non-ironic Glenn Beck afficionado I think I've come out way ahead.

The next couple of days after the party were spent in a mindless rush of cleaning-then-packing. Originally the kid part of the group (they are all STILL the kids) had a charmingly optimistic idea that there would also be a fair amount of entertaining of friends and eating of last-type dinners at all the favorite restaurants in town however when the non-kid part of the group took a shifty at the house (which was doing a MOST impressive artistic interpretation of the after photos of devastating floods) there might have been threatened a) dismemberment and b) bursting into tears so the socializing part of the plan was trimmed back rather a lot.

Fortunately the New Son brings some really excellent friends including one who has moved eleventy billion times in the last year or so and therefore has efficient if ruthless packing skills. She assessed the situation, rallied her new troops and had 90% of the massive heap of boxes and bins beautifully stowed in the rental truck in a couple of hours. At that point we plied her with as much beer, bread, olives, cheese and left-over party sweets as she was willing to face and maybe we secretly plotted how to make friends of in-laws legally contracted to aid and support all extended family members.

As always happens in moves, the last 10% took enormously longer but, finally, absolutely all of the belongings including futon, bed, fooze table, TWO motor scooters etc etc were all tetrised into the truck and lashed down. We even, using FIVE people, managed to get the youngest kid's beloved Triumph motorcycle (named Jack) up the ramp although it was a bit dicey for a while there. After a massive struggle we got it on deck to have its owner declare cheerfully - 'oh look! I had the rear brake locked!' at which point we killed him and stashed his body neatly between the boxes of books and the bin full of craft supplies.

ANYWAY, the point is that they packed, slept and the next day with both families looking admiringly on, the truck and its support Saturn sedan drove slowly away. It was monumental and very touching and would have been a really dramatic exit if immediately after we hadn't discovered the youngest kid's very nice mountain bike, his suitcase of suits, his family heirloom knight's helmet and sundry other items belonging to the whole group. Fortunately they had only just hit the freeway and were able to scurry back without losing too much time.

The next day the visiting middle kid was reluctantly deposited at the air port. Which meant, as I immediately realized, that the house was empty.

EMPTY empty. I mean, lacking in the mountains of semi/demi packed belongings that had taken up all the available space for six weeks, yes, but also empty.

Of kids.

Of even KID.

It feels entirely peculiar. Not totally bad, not utterly good; a mixture of both and very, very odd.

I haven't gotten into the existential bit of it yet which is probably a reasonably good thing - at least I haven't gotten DEEPLY into the existential bit. I'm dabbling my toes in the very shallow end of the existential pool (wearing a fab 40's inspired swim suit because I'm a lousy swimmer and once I get in the water I'll look completely ridiculous so I might as well look gorgeous for the toe-dipping part of the exercise. And no, this makes no sense and has no meaning in the metaphor but as soon as I realized I had a metaphorical existential pool I had to choose my outfit).

I mean, I was in Trader Joe's the other day and the bananas looked particularly nice and I thought 'oh! I don't have to buy seven bunches of bananas if I want them to last a day and a half! [good feeling, immediately followed by] OH! I don't have to buy bananas at all anymore if I don't want. [peculiarly lost feeling].

Or I heard an odd noise in the house and realized that it no longer had a default culprit but instead might be anything from neurotic and devious cats to wind to psychotic killer lurking in bushes and obeying the fair-play rule by making random noises that could potentially alert the victim and allow for escape. And that was weird, and a bit tiring because I had to go track down the odd noise (result: neurotic cat, the fink one not the other one) which took a while. It wasn't emotionally draining or anything just... huh.

Because on the one hand it's just THIS time not-buying-bananas or checking-out-sinister-noise but on the other hand it's now a banana-less lifestyle punctuated by unexplained noisiness.

Odd.

I think it would be weirder if I weren't in a huge fuss over not being ready for my own massive move [I mean REALLY not ready - tune in soon to find out if I collapse sobbing and helpless on the floor or I actually get myself off the laptop and into meaningful action]. It would be weirder if I actually thought about it too maybe, but I plan on leaving that for when I have more time on my hands.

But for now - the garage has space in it, I'm firmly reminding myself that there's no point buying Costco-sized salmon as it simply won't be eaten, and I have agreed with the cats that I will investigate noises only after dusk and when at least one of them is in full view.

 

Wedding, Wedding, Who has the Wedding?

I was going to post on something else.

Then my conscience kicked me up the bum and grabbed me by the scruff and totally threw me up against a wall and said THOU MUST POST AT LEAST A BUNCH OF TIMES ABOUT THE WEDDING!! Because it doesn't matter how much WEDDING takes up your thought and mind and heart (HEART!!) in real life, if you don't post about it IT AIN'T ENOUGH. So, since I'm a bitch to my blogging conscience, here's one more on the wedding[s].

It was fab

It really was.

And it was TOTALLY and honestly and absolutely and in every way THEIR DAY which - skewze me - it seems is unusual sometimes.

I was going down the gilded and tastefully lit Martha Stewart path. I had ordered the stuff and planned out the doo hickeys and even possibly practiced the techniques to make this The Perfect Wedding Party (TM). Dude - I was gonna ROCK it.

Until my gorgeous kid showed up with all her friends and I realized I was trying to make it MY wedding party with MY special doo-hickeys and whats-its and thingies. And they weren't going to have any of the fun.

Which is stupid. Because it's not my wedding, it's not my party, and in the end it's not really important at all whether the fondant was in this shape or that, whether the cake had this glaze or that, whether the ornaments on the tree were tilted to the LEFT or the RIGHT or whatever.

So my kid and her fabulous friends (note to parents - make sure your children choose only the finest of friends because some day you'll be hanging out with them back stage at a wedding party and it'll either be totally awkward or MADE OF AWESOME) chatted and had fun and crafted bits of this and that to deck out her wedding party. And it was casual and unstressful and, in the end, reflected - every last bit of it - who THEY are. And it was wonderful.

However, there's a bit of confusion amongst some people about JUST WHAT HAPPENED, so here's the quick and dirty:

1. May 24th Child 1 (AKA Lally, which isn't her real name either) married Mac (AKA Travis which IS his real name only for some reason I stuck Mac to him so that's what I call him and, bless 'im, he answers which is very kind of him) in Scotland. They married. With vows. And emotional ties and bonds and promises of fidelity. BUT no legals - on account of it's spendy to do it there so they didn't.

2. June somethingth (have to check the paperwork) the parties of the above in a city park signed the state mandated legal documents to switch from tax bracket A to tax bracket B

3. June 30th same parties plus a truly magnificent bagpiper had a formal Nerf duel AND a great party to introduce themselves as married couple to friends, family and the world in general. No vows, no legals but a whole lot of food and some good fun.

My kid said some friend overheard a guest positing that 'some day' she would regret not having the traditional wedding. Which baffles me. I mean, I suppose it's possible? But this whole series of events were so thoroughly THEM, so totally who they are and what they mean and how they feel that I hope... I really hope that future her will look back and be delighted that they did things in a way that made them happy.

And really, what better way is there to found a new family?

 

NB - the couple has been told that since they had THREE celebrations/events/whatevers they are more thoroughly married than anyone has every been in the history of ever so they'd better behave themselves.