The Perils of Procrastination

Normally, I feel that my habit of procrastination isn’t so much procrastination as, well, gracefully waiting for the golden words within me to come bubbling up and spill onto the eagerly waiting paper.

Or something like that.

Sometimes this backfires.  It generally backfires when I have three (3) (III) THREE different writing projects waiting for me– one of which is only my freaking PhD dissertation, y’know– all on similar deadlines, and then I realize that I have travel plans which, shall we say, put the seal on this deadline.  That would be this week.

So let’s relieve some of this pressure, shall we?  I still have to sort out exactly what I’m going to be able to manage for the rest of this week, but for today, well, I’m going to wing it.  I’m going to talk a bit about the Changeling and her literary tastes at the moment.  Some of this is going to take us back into older territory (books we’ve already read) and some into newer territory, but we’re going to take it a little bit easier today, because, for crying out loud, I have a lot of writing to do and basically no time left.  (Why do I do this to myself, people?  Why?)  (Don’t answer that question.)

First, let’s talk about one of the unsung trials of potty training.  Please don’t be squeamish: you know I have a toddler, right?  That means talking about poop at some point.  Right, so, here’s the thing.  Sometimes your toddler will make it very clear they need to go on the potty.  They will volunteer to go.  Then they’ll sit down, get bored, and say, “Hey, I wanna go do something else!”  So, how do you keep them sitting long enough to find out if something’s going to happen or not?  Obviously, you read a book, right?  Right, that’s what I thought, too.  Our book?  Here Babies, There Babies.  It’s short, zippy, and entertaining.  Most of all, it’s become ritualistic.  And there’s something about the rhythm which does seem to, ahem, help move things along…

But what else is she reading these days?  My Wild Family has become a favourite bedtime book, and Robert Munsch’s Good Families Don’t (that’s a Canadian link; you can listen to the book for free over here) has, by virtue of the similarities between the titles, also become popular.  It’s funny because the two books couldn’t be more dissimilar.  My Wild Family, as we’ve discussed, is an elegant, slightly humorous, and gentle book about the characteristics of different people in a family.  Good Families Don’t is about a fart.  It’s funny, chaotic, zany, it’s cheerfully inelegant.  Where My Wild Family teaches you to look inside yourself to see what makes you special, Good Families Don’t, if it has a lesson, teaches you that, actually, good families sometimes do.  Sometimes you should just embrace the farts, because they can be there, and there’s no use in denying them.

And, of course, it has every Canadian’s favourite line in a book: “Good Canadians don’t have farts!  What would the Americans say?”

And that’s what we’re reading over here these days.  And now that I’ve scandalized all of my readers (I am so terribly sorry), I have to try to meet my other deadlines.  Wish me luck!