 This year, the NaNoWriMo head honchos have made a bunch of new badges available. Some of them we earn by passing certain milepost word counts. For the others, the writer is put on her honor to award herself. So far, I have only had two -- a "Planner" Award for starting the month with an outline, and a "Tell the World" badge for blogging about my intentions. This week, I've earned my third -- the "Procrastination" badge. I've now gone two whole days without writing a word, which has put me below the bar of expected performance. After today there are only six days left, if I want to win this silly race, I will have to write 2,012 words or more on every one of those days. That's doable, once I figure out how to stop this procrastination train I've been riding. My "new and exciting ways to procrastinate" have included: 1. A search for a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau -- the first French wine to come out of this year's crop. The traditional release date in France -- practically a national holiday -- is the third Thursday in November (this past 19th). American distributors have always been quite good about having their supplies ordered so that they could be on the shelves on the required day. But not this year. My search had become increasingly frantic, until this morning, when I found cases of the stuff ready to be cracked open for Thanksgiving. One simply cannot write without the assurance that a glass of Nouveau awaits the completion of the day's production. 2. Weeks ago I had scheduled a "deep cleaning" of my kitchen and bathrooms. When the crew arrived Monday morning, I shut myself into my office to read page proofs while they worked. An hour so so later, I emerged to see how things were going, and discovered that "deep cleaning" includes the INSIDES of all cupboards and cabinets. Dishes, pots, pans, and foodstuffs were piled everywhere. "Don't worry," the head woman assured me. "We'll put everything back, except for stuff that is obviously dated "-- and she pointed to a package of grits marked to expire in 2004. I retreated to the office. But when they were gone, I couldn't find anything! And when I did an inventory of things I will need in the next couple of days, I discovered that they had discarded my newly-purchased bottle of pumpkin pie spices, along with the cloves, ginger, and cinnamon I always have on hand. So that required an emergency trip to the grocery store if I wanted pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. 3. The third procrastination was the most fun. I received a check in the mail for a percentage of all the items I have purchased at Costco in the past year. It wasn't an enormous amount, but it counted as "found money" and therefore eligible to be frittered away, so long as I spent it at their store. So while on my wine hunt this morning, I stopped at Costco for "a minute" and spend a LONG time deciding what to buy. I ended up with a fuzzy bathrobe, a box of Belgian chocolates, and a huge Christmas wreath for my front door. And the afternoon was spent trying to figure out how to hang the wreath on the door. The days have not been a loss. I have a clean house, two bottles of French wine, the chocolates, and the wonderful smell of real pine every time I open the door. But tomorrow, I'll have to get back to work! |
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