What Do You Mean "Busy?"

This past weekend I actually got to stay home. What a bizarre experience! It felt truly weird to not pack on Thursday night. I think I spent the whole evening feeling like there was something I was supposed to be doing that I was forgetting and I finally realize that what I was forgetting was the packing that I did not have to do. But it's Thursday, the back of my mind kept saying, we pack on Thursday if we didn't already pack on Wednesday. We didn't pack. We're doooomed! AAAHHH! I think it struck me the hardest on Friday when I was taking my pills and vitamins and then I actually put all the little bottles back in the drawer where they go and not in my travel case. Wait a minute, the back of the mind said, you need to put those in your toiletries bag or we won't have them tomorrow. We'll die! AAAAHHH! So I get over the dislocation of actually being in my own bed on Saturday morning and for one brief shining moment thinking Wow, I have no where I have to be right now, and then reality kicked in hard and demanded my attention. Nice try, silly person, reality said. You have to do your taxes, go to the gem show for parts and charms, clean your car, prep your flight plan for next week, clear your dresser (you know, the one that all the stuff is falling off of from all the weekends you came home with stuff and just threw it on there), get some groceries, catch up your thank you notes, finish your spring letter, finish your new question sheets for the girls, go buy envelopes to mail the spring letter, clean out your gutters before the rain starts again, strip the tangerine tree down to a manageable number of fruit, go through the newspapers piling on the kitchen counter, and get your car smogged. Okay, I said to reality, that's a great list, but I don't think I can do it all. Let's start at the top and go from there and see how far I can get. You know how far I got? I finished number one, did my taxes. Did I get even one other thing on this list done? No, and I wouldn't have gotten the taxes done except that they have a real deadline and I can use my refund money. Do I still have to do all these things? Yes. Are they going to get done any time soon? Well, I will do the flight plan tomorrow because you have to do that before you fly and my flight is Wednesday. Any of the rest of it getting done? Well, I will probably finish my spring letter tonight and get the envelopes tomorrow and then I will start thinking about getting the copies made and the envelopes stuffed. When will that happen? An excellent question. If you find out, please let me know. I will get the thank you notes done tomorrow because thank you notes are like a frisbee over the ocean. As long as the frisbee is flying, you are okay. The second it hits the water, plunk, it's all over. So getting the thank you's done before I travel again this weekend and more thank you's pile up is vital. The rest of the list? God knows, but he ain't tellin'. Sometimes I can look back and remember when I was in college and I thought I was busy. Oh yes, I actually thought I had a lot to do, what with classes and labs and homework and a job and everything. What a total naive, ignorant idiot I was! I had no idea what busy meant! Busy, I have discovered, is when every minute counts, when you slot tasks into time periods worked around other time periods and there are no extra minutes at all. Busy is when it takes you three tries to get to the bathroom because stuff keeps interrupting and then you forget what you were doing so you go do something else instead and then you say, wait a minute, I was in the middle of something else when the phone rang; what was I doing? I was on my way to the other room - oh yeah, I was going to go to the bathroom. How's that for busy? I have so much to do, I forget I was on my way to the bathroom! How pathetic is that?! Thank God for good bladder control! The rest of the list, well, I don't think I have promised away Memorial Day yet. Maybe that will be a good time to tackle those rain gutters. Next weekend, I am in Bakersfield and Escondido.