Purple Procrastination
6:56 p.m. - 2004-11-29


I was reading Audrey's diary today, in which she talks about turkey soup. I used to save every scrap of turkey and make a big pot of turkey soup, I mean this went on for years and years. Finally, I asked my spouse if he even liked it, and it turns out he hates turkey soup, and since I realized that I hate it too, I decided to throw out my guilt along with the carcass. This year, I was taking the extra meat off the bones, then I got tired of doing it, so I just lobbed the whole thing into the garbage, and felt a strange savage joy at the freedom of it all.

I used to feel guilty about things a lot. The worst case of this was when my mother asked me to finish making a purple blouse for her to wear to some important function. She was busy with the other 5 kids and was making the skirt to go with the blouse. I did not finish the blouse completely, but we managed to almost sew her into it and off she went. Afterwards, I was supposed to redo the schlocky job I did, resew the cuffs and put in real buttonholes. I carried that blouse around for years, through college and beyond, with the undone chore hanging over my head. Finally one day I just threw it out (my mom had long forgotten it, besides, it was a 60's garment long out of style). The sense of freedom, the lifting of gloom! A lesson learned.

Today I managed to make the appointments I needed to make to get the dishwasher valve replaced, the light switch fixed, and the minor plumbing job done. I don't procrastinate nearly as much as I used to. And Saturday, he and I are going to go out and do all the Christmas shoppping ahead of time, even if we have to buy weird stuff, because ultimately, no one cares and our sanity is worth something, after all.