THE ROAD TO THE DOG BED IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS.

Husband on travel, daughter at away camp, animals doing their usual 23/7 snoozefest. All I can hear is the whirr of the refrigerator, the occasional muffled clunk of the ice-maker, a 17-year locust outside that is either early or late by 8 years....

AHHH, my chance to live the life of a single gal with nothing but time. I had an imaginary list of how I would spend my day playing, floating on the wind, wherever it wanted to take me. Isn't it what we all fondly reminisce about....

In reality, my big plan was to attack all of the things I can never get to while I am on task when everyone is in my face (and I say that with all the love in the world.)

Tidying a room is not like painting a room that will stay painted for 3 years. It's good for 15 minutes if you are lucky. I was relishing in the concept of cleaning up the house, and then watching it keep acting clean each day until the Category 5 storm returns.

I was going to rip everything out of Madison's closets and reorganize .... I've gotten as far as plunking a laundry basket in front of her closed door. It now feels like there is a drooling, fire-breathing, pointy prickly scaled, bloodshot-eyed gurgling growling monster on the other side of that closed door. I can tell you now, I've already given up.

I was going to wash & fold every stitch of errant dirty laundry in this house. I've gotten as far as making three piles on my bedroom floor. The thought of carrying a load down, finding a holding pen for what's been napping in the dryer for 4 days until I am in FOLD-ALL-IN-FRONT-OF-TV mode.....it just makes me TIRED.

I was going to clean out my closet, declare things 'graduated' that I know I will never fit back into, and if I did, do I REALLY want to be wearing a yellow leather mini skirt at this stage in my life? I did have the distraction of gabbing with my friend on speaker phone while I tossed and sorted & rehung. I found a total of $23 wadded into various jacket pockets, which was magical. Manicure pennies from heaven, I say.

I was going to clean out the garage, go to Goodwill every day with a new load of things I know I will never use, acknowledge that their Garage-Purgatory days have concluded and be rid of the clutter finally. EUchh...maybe another time. God forbid I ruin the manicure.

I was going to wash & shine the kitchen floor. Full of fresh gusto, I cleared out the table, chairs & stools into the family room, mopped like I was getting paid by the stroke....and... then... while admiring the 'ballroom effect' of a cleared out room and appreciating the vast uncluttered tidiness... I lost my spell of motivation.

So here I sit, on the dog bed that I've tossed into the corner, on a pristine floor that I don't want to cover up, OR shine, OR think about any more...I'd much rather be writing because so much ELSE that needs to be done!

Productive procrastination at its best!