On the Couch

I'm starting to think I have this blog to avoid seeing a therapist. I look at my last four or five posts and they are all in one way or another excuses and apologies for not blogging more.

I joke about being a lazy writer as if I'm not a lazy writer because in fact I am a lazy writer. Although I am not a lazy person. Quite the opposite. My life consists of a long complicated list of things to do that I will never get done. Literally. I carry a list in my pocket every single day and have since my early twenties. On the list today, for example, I am to pick up the dry cleaning, begin thinking about remarks for fundraiser next month, call Claude, hang chin-up bar for my wife, fix outdoor light switch, see Inglorious Basterds, work on Jeff's table and, oh look - update blog.

Obviously these things go in no particular order. Items like dry cleaning I don't even bother to cross off because it seems there is always dry cleaning to be picked up or dropped off and by the time I get around to actually doing it, it is there to be done. Things like begin thinking about.... are simply there to nag. I will never finish this list. I add tasks at half again the rate I cross them off and will certainly die with lots and lots of things left undone. I am guaranteed to die a failure in my own eyes. Neat trick, isn't it? For those of you wondering, yes, I was raised Catholic.

Probably because of this list I have a very unhealthy relationship with time and money. I know when I die it is quite possible I will have a few dollars leftover somewhere, but I am absolutely certain I will be out of time. Even if I know gas is ten cents cheaper at a station on the other side of town I will not go there because the two dollar difference on a tank of gas is not worth my time. And the sooner I fill my tank the sooner I can cross off get gas on my list. It has never occurred to me to put save money on the list. It seems so counter-productive and probably bad for the economy.

Of course it's just as likely that some day I will be out of money before I'm out of time and my list might say things like steal bread and rummage through dumpster. Go live with children is a possibility for future lists as is sell memoir, cheap. That will lead to the inevitable remember to write memoir and my life list will finally have reached its absurd and unavoidable conclusion.

Thanks Doc. See you next week.

Dog Days

Why am I not posting more often? Because I am lazy. Lazy and hot. Lazy and hot and damp. We are in the dog days of summer and I am panting. One must think of things in order to sufficiently construct a blog entry and I cannot think of anything except: it's hot. The hazy air surrounding my house and hanging stagnant inside it is aggressively still this morning. Not only does it not move, but it resists being moved. These are precisely the conditions that existed at the dawn of time when a simple one-celled critter from a space rock began dividing and multiplying and evolving into swine flu, gladiolas and Justin Timberlake.

I feel like heading in the other direction. I am heading in the other direction. In an effort to cool itself my body has shut down all unnecessary functions and I am writing this using only my brain stem and a stick.

As they say down yonder -- It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.