Thursday, November 29, 2012

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

Today I de-Halloweened our front porch.

Yes, it's November 29th.  Yes, I know Thanksgiving was a week ago.

Go ahead and judge if you must.  You didn't actually think I was writing this blog and admin-ing our Facebook page and writing letters to AISD with three kids - one under six months - and still maintaining my household, did you?  I mentioned Mount Laundry, right?  :)  (To be completely honest, Mount Laundry exists here regardless of what else is going on in our lives.)

So yes, our Halloween decorations were still up.  Not a big surprise (to me, anyways), considering I didn't even finish putting them up until October 31st to begin with.  For a little while I tried to convince myself that they were up in protest of the Christmas stuff being out in - what - August, this year?  But since we usually buy our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, that excuse didn't work for long.  If only I'd thought of it sooner.

The thing is, the longer the stupid ghosts and bats were hanging up out there, the harder it was to take them down.

Why is it that the longer we procrastinate, the more difficult it is to initiate a task?  Even - or perhaps especially - the really big stuff - pay that overdue bill, send that late birthday gift, make that appointment.  Then, of course, doing the thing winds up being so completely freaking simple once you're in it.  Ten or fifteen minutes packing away decorations.  Easy-peasy.

It's like the anticipation of a shot, which can be agony, while the actual  pinch of the needle is really no big deal.

As I was thinking how foolish I'd been to let myself be so overwhelmed that I put off this absurdly easy job for so long, and thinking how much embarrassment I could have saved myself, and how much frustration I could have likely saved my neighbors, I thought of AISD.  Because I am almost constantly thinking of AISD.

This could have been a non-issue.  Write a policy copying the language of the law (the right to breastfeed law, not the pumping employees law), email it to me, it's done.  Easy peasy.

Instead, something so simple it's almost ridiculous that it's necessary is taking for.ev.er.  And causing a lot of frustration and embarrassment.  We're almost three months in and now it's this whole big thing.

It seems like they ought to be able to sit down for ten minutes, type up a policy conforming to the law, email it to principals, and be done with us. 

We're hosting family after Christmas, and I'd really like to clear off that couch and put up a tree soon, and get an early start on the school's silent auction to boot.  And I'm sure they'd like to focus more fully on educating our kids. 


One last Halloween hurrah  - here I am nursing my babe while trick-or-treating this year.  My oldest and I were ninjas.  Cause he wanted me to be - and cause I'm so good at being discreet that I'm a Nursing Ninja!



Please tell me I'm not alone!  
Is there anything crazy ridiculous you're putting off?

3 comments:

  1. I was at HEB today, and I bought the boys each a new sippie cup so that I didn't have to do dishes tonight. :)

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  2. My Christmas tree is still in its storage box in the living room from last year. Maybe next summer it will be in the attic.

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  3. I put off writing a term paper for a year... the only thing standing between me and my BA. For a year, that term paper loomed over me like a dark cloud. I carried around the horrible text book everywhere. In my car. At the market. On vacation. Everywhere, and at all times. The longer I waited, the harder it was, the more I got writer's block. Finally, my deadline came and went (I had rc'd an "incomplete" in the class because of this paper), and my grade defaulted to a C (from the A that I had otherwise earned by working hard all semester). It was enough for them to issue my diploma. Sheesh. I should've taken the C from the start, instead of living in torture for a year.

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