I Need Supervision

This is from 4 months ago when we first moved, but I think it's a good benchmark for how just about every day goes for me.

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I keep trying to be productive and listen to the little productivity gnome that lives in my head, but it’s much easier to avoid responsibility entirely. I plan out all my days with Things To Do, but failure usually happens the night before when I’m up until 3am watching Youtube videos.

Then instead of waking up at 7 like a responsible person, I roll out of bed around 10, having spent the last three hours alternating between hitting the snooze alarm and pushing the cat off me because she won’t stop kneading my bladder.

This is where I reach a crucial turning point of my day. I have to make the decision between immediately jumping into the shower or sitting down at my computer to “just check my email quickly.”

Once I sit down at my computer, my chances for doing anything productive before noon has fizzled. I start by checking my email and then check Ravelry “just to see if I have any messages, I totally won’t browse.” Then I figure while I’m here, I’ll take a “quick peek” at Facebook. This is followed by wandering over to Cracked because they posted a new article and the next thing I know, it’s after noon and I’m still naked on the sofa.

Half the time, I make the wise decision of hopping into the shower immediately. This is followed by sitting down at the computer as a reward for being so productive. Just to check my email, of course. The next thing I know, it’s after noon and I’m still naked on the sofa, but at least I’m a clean naked on the sofa!

At this point, I realize I’ve wasted half the day already and I’m “burnin’ daylight” as my dad always says. So I immediately go into Super Productivity Mode! This is also known as the Hyperactive and Easily Distracted Mode. I start by grabbing a box of stuff and putting away the contents. Halfway through, I reach an item that has no designated home yet. So I proceed to go make a home for it.

Halfway through making a home for that item, I find a box of Stuff I Need To Take Care Of Before The Weekend. Panic sets in and I rush to work on the stuff in the box because if I don’t, the world will collapse and I’ll be living under a bridge surrounded by overly cheerful hobos telling me it could be worse. (My fears are oddly specific.)

Halfway through working on this important box, I realize I need some sort of office supply and I can’t find it anywhere. So I decide now is a good time to hit the store because I also need something else, but I wanted to wait until I had more than one thing on the list because otherwise it’s just a waste of gas.

I go get the thing I need and triumphantly walk through the door. That’s when I see the thing I needed sitting on top of a bookshelf, where I put it so I wouldn’t lose it. Shortly after, I realize that I forgot about those errands I had to run today and I’m pissed because I really don’t want to have to make another trip back into town.

So I stomp over to the computer to respond to the obnoxious flashing orange bar that says I have 10,000 AIM messages that I received while I was out. That’s when I trip over the box of stuff that started this whole mess, scattering its contents across the floor.

I respond by kicking the box across the room and accidentally into the one spot a cat was sleeping. The cat bolts out of her hidey-hole and spazzes across the kitchen counter, leaving destruction in her wake.

This leads to me having to go clean up the mess, using the empty box I just kicked as a ”I’ll stick it here for now and take care of it later” because I have Important Stuff To Do.

I sit back down at the computer and remember that I have a couple job applications to finish. So I finish those and go to print them, but then remember that I had unhooked the printer to move it to its permanent home. So I have to hook it back up. But the spot where the printer goes is covered in stuff that I didn’t finish unpacking the previous day. So I grab an empty box (we have a lot right now) and toss it all in. I hook up the printer and go to print out my applications and resumes.

Ding! We’re out of resume paper! I check the closing dates on the jobs and decide I’d better hit the store so I can turn the application in today. On my way out, I trip over the strewn stuff from the box I originally intended to unpack. I grab another empty box, toss it all in, then run out the door.

I get back from the store and print out my applications and resumes. I discover I have no pen, so I dig in some boxes for pens and along the way, discover a pad of resume paper. I grumble and sign the stuff, then get it all ready and run back out to turn the applications in.

I get home and realize:

1. I have been to town three times and haven’t once done any of my errands.
2. Instead of emptying one box, I have actually filled two.
3. All the items I had to run to the store to buy were in the first box of stuff I was trying to unpack.

And thus has been the last week of my life.

Random Short Stories

When I was little, we got a new pastor at church. I went up at the front of the congregation for his first Children’s Hour. At one point, the pastor made a grand, sweeping gesture, then dramatically put his hand on top of my head. I made a face and he responded with “Well, yuck!”

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My cat Isis once wrote to Socks the First Cat and received a signed photo as a reply.

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I had never driven through a toll road until five years ago. I didn’t know what to do and accidentally didn’t take the ticket. I fretted the whole drive that I was in huge trouble. When I got to the part where I had to pay, I apologized and asked what I should do. The bored attendant told me I just had to pay $5. I felt like an idiot for worrying.

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According to my parents, while we were at a restaurant celebrating my first birthday, I ordered the lobster. Mom said from then on, she knew I would have expensive tastes.

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After an ice storm coated everything in a slick layer of ice, I thought it would be awesome to slide down the road from the top of the hill on our old-fashioned metal sled. After hitting a bump that sent me flying into a snowbank, I had to wait for 20 minutes before my brother and his friend to come along and untangle my arms and legs from the rope.

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I often came home from the bus stop soaked to the bone and covered in mud because I couldn’t resist jumping in the biggest puddles I saw.

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I was an avid tree-climber as a kid. When I went to college, I would climb trees on campus, but people thought it was weird so I stopped.

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During college, I used to make tiny little flags with “Spain” or “Cleveland” written on them. Then I’d put them in random places all over campus, claiming land for Spain and Cleveland.

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My second year of college, I stole the dorm’s lounge piano and put it in my room. Naturally, I did it on a dare. I returned it the next evening.

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One day during my second year of college, I got the flu. A friend asked if I needed anything from the dining hall and I said “just a spoon” because I was going to eat soup in my room and had no utensils. Somehow, everyone else found out I needed a spoon and half the people in my group brought me a spoon that night. It became a “thing” and every day for two months after, someone would bring me a new spoon. I had about eighty of them by the time Christmas break rolled around.

At Christmas that year, dad got me a cordless drill. I went back early because I was taking a winter term class and since I only had one class and only a couple friends were around, I got pretty bored fast. For some reason, I decided an excellent boredom alleviation would be to drill a hole into the bowl of each of those spoons I had. Over the next semester, I slowly reintroduced the holey spoons back into the cafeteria. I could always tell when someone got a holey spoon because of the puzzled look on the person’s face when the soup drained out.

I still have one of those spoons.

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I used to try to impress people by lifting my car off the ground. Half of them realized it was just a Geo Metro and it was nothing special. The other half asked for help with moving.

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When my brother was a toddler, I taught him how to make a soda can fort with all the empty soda cans. The best part was when I convinced him to let me encase him in a soda can pyramid and then jump out when mom came into the kitchen.

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I learned in second grade that the utility access hatch in our attic is not a secret passageway to another room and should be avoided at all costs.

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When my brother was in kindergarten, I convinced him to play Cowboy X, wherein he used a sharpie to mark an X all over the log walls of our house. My parents were not pleased.

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When a moderate earthquake hit the New Madrid in 1990 (1991?), it rattled some dishes and tilted a picture on the wall. I thought that was so hilarious that for a week, I went around the house tilting pictures and trying to convince my parents that we had more earthquakes. It did not work.