Procrastinating Parent

I have always been a procrastinator.  In college, I would always wait until the day before a paper/test then cram as much useless knowledge into my brain as humanly possible in an unbelievably short window of time.
Why?  Because when you don't really want to do something, you tend to push it down the list until you are forced to deal with it.  Then you do what you have to do and it's over.  In the end you feel a great sense of relief, maybe even accomplishment.
Procrastinating as a parent is a bit different.  There's so many things you don't want to do that it's hard to decide which things to ignore.  When you finally defeat your indecisiveness and do what needs to be done, instead of feeling that relief, you have that foreboding sense that you will be doing it again tomorrow and deja vu that you were just doing it yesterday.

This is what happens when you ignore the laundry for a day.    

One DAY! Where did it all come from?  Ugh!

This is why laundry is at the bottom of my list, along with changing beds, doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.  So pretty much all household chores. 

Instead of doing what needs to be done, I'll do anything else.  Possibly catch up on my correspondence. There's just not a big enough reward for cleaning the floor or doing the laundry.  You know there will just be more crap on the floor after dinner and well, we've discussed the never ending story that is the laundry.  

If you come to my house be prepared.  Most mornings it looks like a bomb went off in my kitchen.  If you see me out in public and I'm wearing real clothes and so are my kids, well then you know this day is already as successful as it's going to be.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is get up in the morning.  College me says 'Just five more minutes!'.  Then there's that Home Alone moment when I realize what time it actually is.  I jump out of bed, get everyone dressed, downstairs and eating breakfast like I'm running a fire drill.  In a hurricane of hurry I'm checking to see who needs snacks/lunch, whether or not it's a 'special' day at school (God help me, I missed teddy bear day last week) and are we sure we don't have any homework or papers to sign.  No?  Then I start barking the orders:  Finish your breakfast, get your shoes on, grab your stuff and get in the van!

If only I hadn't slept that extra 5 (15) minutes but then....I'm a procrastinator and that's what I do. 

I could also add:  If only the twins hadn't gotten me up numerous times in the night but never mind.

Here's to the next generation of procrastinators or as I like to think of them, 

'people who can work under pressure'.