Procrastinating...

So, while I'm not working on my taxes, getting paperwork ready for tomorrow's board meeting, mopping the den floor where the dogs mistook its concrete for the outdoors ... uh, last year ... uh, three times ...  I'm also staring at a necklace, a very complicated design, which I started either two weeks ago or two years ago depending on where you consider its starting point really is...

I'm blogging instead. It's not so much what I am doing, it's more a reason to avoid what I'm not doing. I've gotten pretty good at being busy at one thing instead of another.

So why am I procrastinating on all these things?

Let's start with taxes. I have all the paperwork, though I really need to pull everything out of my file box and sort 2016 from 2017, and some of the stuff I need, like how much SS I got last year, got detoured into a stack of paperwork I've set aside for proper ID for a driver's license that actually allows me to fly and do cool stuff like enter Canada, which in turn requires proof that the me on my birth certificate is actually the me on my SS card, and I never did replace my original card with one with my new name on it after marriage a gazillion years ago.  (Now that's procrastination, although the SS folks have followed me around just fine, and have no problem paying me or setting up my Medicare when it was time. The new card should be here in a couple weeks.) Anyhow, stalling on my taxes has nothing to do with owing any money, because I don't, or not figuring it all out, since I filed my own business taxes for over 40 years and this year I only need about 3 numbers on the form. I just am. I still have over a week, anyway.

Tomorrow's board meeting involves making some copies of last month's minutes to distribute to the board, and I was just at the printer working on copies -yes Virginia, real hard copies - of the tax forms, and I simply didn't get around to it. Maybe the floor under the printer having been one of the dog's target spots rushed me out of there.

The floor? Well, that involves not having the right kind of mop,  so I have to go to the store. I probably also need the right kind of mop bucket and a better type of detergent, and since I have to go pick up a prescription later, I can do at least that part... if I get it all on the list... later. Plus, if I do mop the den floor instead of just keeping the door closed forever except when I use the printer, I can't pretend I don't see the dirty floor behind the living room chairs where Fred lies down and drags in desert dirt on his greasy coat, leaving it there to build up. And once I start on that, I will also see where he leans along the wall, creating a brown stripe about a foot high and, oh, 10 feet long? And then, since I'm cleaning, there's the kitchen floor under the sink, and sweeping all the Fred-bunnies off of everywhere, and ....

The necklace began with cutting and polishing 6 identically- sized cabochons from a single lavender agate slab. OK, lavender plus light stripes plus black dendrites plus orange plumes. Pretty cool, actually. It's been among the projects that have kept me awake hours after bedtime designing in my head. It's implementation time now, and after getting approval that what I want to do will actually qualify for sale in the club store because the design incorporates purchased amethyst beads, I started putting it all together and once nearly finished decided that the copper wire made the cabs look muddy. Like, ick! I can't use silver like I really want if I want to sell in the store, because my silver isn't sterling, only silver-filled. I can't afford sterling. So it sits.

I am thinking about it. I wonder whether I want to continue with this in my silver, perhaps making next year's X-mas presents instead of making something to sell. Perhaps find a new slab to start from. Perhaps just cut this project back from three cabs plus triple chains with hanging amethysts all wrapped in copper to just the one cab with the most orange and a smaller, less ambitious design. Whatever I decide, I've already wasted a lot of wire and some lengths of chain.

I did actually pooper scoop the yard, cut the damaged trunk from the "thorn tree", though without having cut most of it into small enough pieces to go out in the garbage in a dog food bag so they don't stab our garbage collectors, cut the brown seed stalks from last year off the red yuccas without destroying this year's nice crop of new stalks about to bloom in brilliant red, separating out the seeds which I scattered down among the yuccas in case they might actually sprout and increase the clump sizes. I cut out a lot of the old dead brown leaves (think spears) from the blue yuccas, though not all, and got most of the cut ones removed from the plants' centers and onto the ground, though without actually gathering them up for the garbage. A new smaller wire cage went around the thorn tree to keep the rabbits actually out this time, and transferred the larger one around a bush with a tiny cage which had been choking it. It didn't get staked, however. Yet.

See? Lots of ways to procrastinate and still fool myself into thinking I'm not useless. Including blogging.

Of course I've forgotten just what I was going to actually blog about this time.