Back home and procrastinating like the champion pro-cras-ti-NAY-TOR that I am: Check check.
It's 3:06 in the afternoon, and I'm still wearing my pajamas. Granted, they're whimsical, black and white, Fair Isle-patterned, Victoria Secret long underwear pajamas, but it's after 8 a.m., and I'm still wearin' 'em. The gas logs are blazing, my black lab is snoring on her Christmas-present new dog bed, and my toddler is napping. Finally.
It's not that I've been lazing about, as my husband likes to say, "eating Bon Bons." (What ARE Bon Bons, by the way? They sound like something French and dirty.) So far today, I've fed my dog and child, helped my husband find his wallet, made up a grading calendar and graded assignments for an online writing class I'm teaching, checked both of my work email accounts, washed several loads of laundry, finished a novel assigned by my faculty advisor at Vermont College, and prepped and started a big, fat crockpot of turkey chili for tonight's supper. Yet, I'm still in my pajamas. If Publisher's Clearing House arrives at the door--like I'm sure they will since I've been filling out those daggum envelopes for years--I will be That Woman. You know, the one in her housecoat with the greasy hair, covering her face and shouting, "Oh, law, I can't believe I'm on T.V. like this!" Of course, I'll be in my cute Fair Isle pajamas.
This is all to say that in spite of each of the aforementioned tasks being important, I'm still procrastinating. Here's why:
I arrived home from Montpelier, Vermont and VCFA on Sunday, January 8, exhausted from travel and desperately happy to see my family. At the airport in Greenville, South Carolina, where I last landed, my two year-old towhead of a daughter broke from her father and sprinted through a crowd of people heading toward baggage claim, and leapt into my arms. My God--what a life! Two days after returning home, two of our best friends in the world and their twin 16 month-olds arrived at our tiny house in the mountains, and we had a wonderful few days together, eating and drinking and chasing kiddos and laughing with more friends. Then, my parents came to visit for the day before leaving on one of their many jaunts about the globe (they've been burning up the mountain highway to our house for, oh, the past 2 1/2 years). Then my husband and I poohed out a bit over the weekend. Sure, we went grocery shopping and cleaned up and played with our daughter and hiked with friends and I began cleaning my Jabba the Hut of a desk, but we poohed out.
Which brings us to today. I gave myself last week, as a gift, to regroup after the residency and to enjoy time with friends. But now it's time for the heavy lifting. For the work on the many, many pages of creative and critical writing I'm to mail to my advisor in three weeks. But I find myself, home again, willing to do anything else that needs doing in my house, other than write. Because writing is hard. And I'm a big, stinkin' mess of procrastination. The Pro-Crass-ti-nay-TOR: able to avoid the-thing-she-loves-doing-most in a single bound. More on this at a later date. (See: I'm sneaky.)
The residency itself was a good one, my first with Vermont College. The campus was snow-covered and lovely, the lectures for the most part interesting and helpful--some downright inspiring. The new friends, especially, a joy. Writers are a ridiculous, wonderful, ego-centric, odd, irreverent bunch, and it's always nice to be in the company of my people. Even the dorm room I stayed in--though some may disagree--wasn't so bad. Though I did feel, upon entering, a swift urge to paper the walls with Matthew McConaughey posters and blast the Dave Matthews Band. And order pizza at 3 a.m. And wear flip-flops. And go to breakfast wearing the same clothes I'd worn the night before. But I digress.
See, the dorm:
Not so bad, right? Bigger than my freshman year dorm room at Clemson. (On a side note, I slept like a rock in Vermont, woke each day bright-eyed at 6:30 a.m. Wierd.)
And the campus, small and lovely:
And Montpelier, the state capitol, only a ten minute's walk down the hill from the College. I spent quite a bit of time there with new friends and alone, dining and shopping and wandering:
Around the State House...
across foot bridges...
at the oft-frequented Postive Pie 2, our unofficial residency hangout, with new writer-friends Rachel and Kim ...
through the streets of town...
wandering neighborhoods, admiring the old Victorian homes and added-upon cottages... watching the Winooski River slowly freeze at its edges, despite the unseasonably warm weather...
hiking in icy Hubbard Park, with my new friend, writer Amy Wallen...
climbing the old tower there...
utilizing the Port-o-Potty (cutest I've ever seen... and yes, I've seen a few Port-o-Potties)...
It was heaven, that time in the woods. Even though I slipped on the ice and thought I fractured my elbow. But I digress.
So now I'm home, trying like all heck to organize my life, my work, my writing, my schooling, my family into one neat, color-coordinated schedule. I'm trying to figure out how I can do it all, and do it well.
I may give myself one more week....
