Am I too late?

The almost inevitable consequence of sleeping in on Saturdays is that I stay up too late on Saturday night. Tonight's case is a little extreme: I got 12 glorious hours of sleep, but now it is 3:20 AM. I've been up less than 12 hours, and here I am, rushing to pull together a rant for your reading pleasure so I can go back to bed.

I'm a bit annoyed and distracted at the moment because a rather large, fat mouse is making chewing noises a few feet from me. John puts out traps and catches them (we long since gave up on the humane traps, I'm sorry to say), but there are always more mousies to replace them.

Anyway, that's not the theme du jour. The subject I've selected to ramble on about tonight is lateness, and the related concept, procrastination. This isn't going to be a listing of incidents like that Weekend Assignment of several weeks ago. Tonight I'm asking myself two questions. One, is there a qualitative difference between my chronic procrastination back in high school and my behavior now? And two, as it says in the subject line, am I too late? Too late for what? Yes, I'll answer that as well.

I actually threw a Doctor Who book at the mousie earlier. now it's out of sight. I can still hear it, though.

Okay, on that first question, I think that I really have improved over the last three decades in my tendency to put things off. (Ha! I just saw it run off. It was interested in a box that used to have candy in it. I took away the box.) In my school days (junior high, high school and college the first time) I had a distinct tendency to put off reading assignments and writing papers. In college the second time, I kept up with it all. More germane to my life now, the stuff I put off these days is cleaning and doing dishes and fiction writing and...okay, I take it back. Maybe I haven't improved as much as I think. Still, there's lots of stuff I face right away, and it's not that hard. I can't think of any examples right now, but there are some, I'm sure.

That was a bust. Let's see if I do better with the too lateness question.

Things I haven gotten done yet:

1. Publishing the Mâvarin books. This worries me, and has done so for a long time. I expect that an agent or publisher's interest in the first book would be a huge motivator in getting the rest ready to go, but meanwhile I'm not doing everything I can, and that's wrong. Beyond that, I worry that people will think that any book that's been in the works for 33 years can't be any good, because if it were it would be in print by now. It marks me as deluded, still thinking after all these years that I can do something with that same old manuscript. Of course, it isn't really the same old manuscript, but it's still a ridiculously long time for a book to be in the works. And don't tell me to put it aside and write something else, or I shall be very angry with you. I do attempt other fiction from time to time, but somehow, none of the rest of it matters. Mâvarin matters.pu

2. Tuffy's treatment. John and I are pretty much agreed on the third surgery, as scary as it is, but we have to get over the fear and worry in order to do it. The fear and worry isn't just over the tongue and the possible feeding tube, or Tuffy suffering thereby. John is still not convinced that the appetite issue isn't an indication of other troubles. I was going to call Dr. L today, but woke up after her Saturday office hours. John doesn't think it's vital that we take her in on Monday or Tuesday this week (when the surgeon is there), but I really don't want to put this off. But is it the right thing to do?

3. Halloween preparations. Somehow I seem to always tackle Halloween preparations the Saturday before the holiday itself. Last weekend I went looking for the seasonal Halloween shop, but didn't find it until Tuesday, as I drove back from the vet on my way back to work. It's not exactly close by. So tonight I went to Spencer's and World Market, having been disappointed with the offerings at Walgreen's this year. I've been cycling through the same couple of costumes for about five years, and it's time for a change. Unfortunately, the idea I finally had isn't panning out so far. Quick! Where can I get Tiki stuff by the 31st? I'm tempted to resort to papier mâché, and John would hate that.

4. Going to bed. Well, I can always go to bed! But first I have dishes to wash, so I'd better get on with that. But first...


My 2007 survey of "pumpkin anything" products has been less satisfactory than in past years. So far I've come across three products I would never try: pumpkin ale, pumpkin coffee, and pumpkin creamer. I've tried the pumpkin soup from Safeway, and disliked it enough that I didn't finish it. Not good!



And eating even the stuff I like in quantity can easily get to be too much. I would have liked the pumpkin muffin from Sweet Tomatoes much better had I not just eaten yam soup and other good things.



Oh! One other thing I worked on tonight was my AIM page. It makes me sad, because it used to be something that Editor Joe was paid to blog about. He's gone from that project, but the AIM pages are still there. Today I found out, briefly, how to add a little "what I'm up to" update, similar to Twitter, another social networking site I mostly ignore. From my AIM page, though, I see no obvious way to add another update, nor go to my email. The whole AIM pages thing seems kind of underdeveloped and counterintuitive. But I changed the theme and added a module and uploaded a photo: the one above, left over from the Shadowland entry. And I have been thinking about Rona and her grandfather. I hope to have more of their story for you soon. But for now, good night!

Karen