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Broke Wife, Big City
A eulogy for
procrastination (which I’ll finish writing later)
By Aprill Brandon
When you have a baby, many things are added to your life. Pure joy, for
one. A love you didn’t know was possible, for another. Happiness. A
sense of meaning. Wisdom (well, relatively…babies are super dumb so you
are super wise in comparison).
Of course, it’s a bit of a trade-off because you lose things too in the
process. A good night’s sleep. Daydrinking. The ability to talk to
people without mentioning poop or very private medical details.
But the thing I miss the most is procrastination.
We’ve been friends a long time, procrastination and me. We first met in
high school, where we spent countless mornings in the girl’s bathroom
together, furiously copying Misty’s Spanish homework in the seven
minutes between arriving at school and the first bell (which wasn’t
really cheating because I was totally absorbing the material as I
sloppily scribbled it down…el gato esta en la microonda, comprende?).
Procrastination is also the reason why I read “Huckleberry Finn” in one
night in college, closing the cover at 4 a.m. and realizing I had just
read one the greatest books of all time as I drifted off to sleep (and
then continued sleeping right through the exam).
But once you have a kid, being able to procrastinate is the second
thing to go, right after the ability to watch any TV show in which a
child gets kidnapped.
Yes, no longer do I possess the luxury of putting things off. Oh, trust
me, I tried. There for awhile I kept my same kitchen cleaning schedule
of “only do the dishes once you find yourself eating soup out of a
Frisbee using a shot glass.” But then what ends up happening is that
all the bottles and sippy cups are dirty and you have to wash an
individual one in the sink like some kind of peasant and all the while
the baby is screaming because he’s hungry and you realize you’re just
going to repeat this whole horrible process in three hours unless you
finally just cave in and load the dishwasher. And before you know it,
suddenly you’re emptying and reloading the dishwasher every single day.
It’s the same way with the laundry. I put off doing it until the
evening I realized Riker was completely out of clothes. So I just
slapped my old Nirvana T-shirt on the kid, tucked him in and called it
a night. Except I didn’t get a wink of sleep that night because I kept
worrying that, of course, that night would be the night something
horrible happened and I’d have to take him to the emergency room and
the doctor would take one look at this tiny thing swimming in Kurt
Cobain’s face and immediately call child services because I am
obviously an unfit mother.
And let me tell you, you will only once, ONCE, miscalculate how many
diapers you have and say to yourself “oh, that should be enough, we’ll
just go to the store tomorrow.” Because babies can sense when you only
have three diapers left and they view it as a personal challenge to use
them all in the next 37 minutes.
I don’t even procrastinate on paying bills anymore. Because while
having my electricity cut off and my landlord knocking on the door
while I drink vodka in the dark and praise my creative spirit that
wouldn’t let me sell out (I am CREATING ART, I have a DREAM, dammit)
seemed very “la vie boheme” a few years ago, it’s just irresponsible
and sad when you’re a parent.
But I think what I miss procrastinating the most on is this right here.
Writing. As I type this very sentence, it’s been two hours since I sat
down and started this column. And I’ve sat here this whole time, just
typing word after word, until they became sentences and the sentences
became paragraphs. I haven’t gotten up. I haven’t checked Facebook and
Twitter. I haven’t made myself a snack or Googled new diets as I ate my
snack or online shopped for clothes I would fit into thanks to my new
future diet.
I just wrote.
Now, if you’re not a writer, you might think “well, yeah, that’s how it
works.” But it’s not. Writing is the thing writers spend the least
amount of time on. When a writer says they’re writing, what they’re
really doing for three hours is anything else in the world followed by
ten minutes of actual writing followed by Googling their own name as
they eat Cheetos.
And I miss that. Deeply.
But here I sit. Actually writing. Because my husband has stuff he needs
to do today and in a few minutes it will be my turn to play “Let’s Not
Kill Ourselves!” with the baby.
So, for those of you out there who are still able to procrastinate,
enjoy it. Luxuriate in it. Hug it, kiss it, then air hump it and spoon
it for an hour.
Because once it’s gone, once you actually have to do the stuff that
needs to be done all the time, you’ll miss it.
Or at least you would if you weren’t busy sweeping the floors because
you just pulled your baby out from under the table and he looked like
he went a couple of rounds with some mammoth dust bunnies on steroids
and lost.
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
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