10.  You don’t have to get naked to do revisions (Although, you can if you want–just be sure to switch your webcam off first.)

9.  Your revisions don’t care if you pause in the middle of the action to check out Glee or Gossip Girl.  I mean, it’s Chuck Bass!

8.  Performing revisions in your favorite coffee shop will not result in you being booted, arrested, or getting latte with extra froth in unmentionable places.

7.  The satisfaction of a good revision won’t wear off in, say, five minutes.

6.  You won’t feel bad about eating that extra piece of chocolate cake before jumping into revisions.

5.  Your children can be present during revisions without fear of scarring them for life.

4.  Multiple partners can help with your revisions—and you won’t be labeled kinky.

3.  You can curse your revisions with as many creative obscenities as you like, and it still won’t affect your chances of getting lucky with them.

2.  The only way revisions will result in an expanding belly is if you pig out on Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche and In-N-Out burgers while writing.

1.  You never know—the perfect revision may lead to a long-lived and prosperous career.  The perfect sexual encounter?  Not so much.  Unless said career involves thigh-high boots and a tube top.  (Okay, so maybe the second career is more prosperous, but still…..)

Now, quit being so productive and take a moment to name yours!

I guess that wouldn’t be such a big deal, if my to-do list didn’t look something like this:

–clean house (it’s even too dirty for me to tolerate at this point)

–do laundry (because sometimes after you’ve worn the same outfit for the 5th time or so without washing it, it starts to exude a not-so-daisy-fresh scent)

–put away dishes (one thing I actually do on a regular basis, thank you very much)

–put away laundry (because in this sick and twisted universe, my garmets do not magically march themselves into my closet once I go to all the effort to wash them—lazy bastards)                                                                                                                                                                        

–throw out used diapers (yeah, so that one’s never gonna happen–but it’s still on my list)

–go to grocery store (I feel like I was just there yesterday.  Oh yeah–it’s because I was)

–buy new pots and pans (since hubby tossed all of our old ones into the trash in one fell swoop, and it’s challenging to cook in an empty Marie Callendar’s pie pan ((although it does make for a nice dog-food dish in a pinch)))

–take care of baby (as if I could forget that one)

–send out resume (So I can try to pick up some weekend hours, with the inadvertent effect of never seeing my husband ever ever again since he commutes 60+ miles each way to work and gets home around bedtime.  Maybe we can leave each other love notes and treat our marriage like a long-distance romance.)

–find resume first (since we have about ten computers in our home thanks to husband’s predilection for collecting electronic junk, and I have no idea which one it’s stored on)

–Dremel dogs’ nails (so my mom and aunt don’t disown me when they come out to visit and take our Ridgebacks to a dog show–for some reason, AKC judges prefer the dogs nails not to look like eagle talons–imagine that)

–cook dinner (don’t I have to go to the store first?)

–pick up punching bag from the middle of the living room floor (because apparently my husband thinks that’s the dumping grounds for new purchases)

–read parenting books (because my son has gone a little mental in response to our newest family addition, which, in turn, makes me a lot mental)

–clean out:  laundry room, front closet, car, garage bins, my brain

So, what have I accomplished so far today?  Let’s see—looked up stuff on craigslist (not on the list), looked up stuff on ebay (not on the list), emailed some people (not on list) and written this blog (not on list)

Oh, but I am taking care of the baby, so I guess the day’s not a total loss.

 In case you didn’t believe me, about the punching bag:

See, we live next to an uninhabited hilly area.  Residing in uninhabited hilly areas are oodles of rats.  Rats, like the rest of us,  would rather trade up from their dirty little rat homes and find nicer (yet still dirty) indoor digs in which to warm their homely little disease-ridden rat bodies during the cold weather.  Oh, and apparently it’s an added bonus if that indoor location has lots of old clothes, cardboard boxes, rotting pinatas and various junk strewn throughout.  Did I mention we have a three-car garage in which to store all this crap?

Anyway, back on topic.  See, when my husband tidies up the garage, he does a pretty good job.  I’ll be the first to admit it.  But—and this is a big one, of J-Lo proportions—should you really get cleaning points when, in tackling one mess, you sort of maneuver half of that mess into a new, more conspicuous spot, and leave it there for weeks on end?  This is the essence of my husband’s cleaning tactics, and one of the reasons we argue so much about it.  I guess I just really don’t believe that relocating the disaster site does a ton of good in the long run.  He does.

You be the judge.  Pictured below is our driveway following one of hubby’s abbreviated garage organizing stints.  Of special interest is the fact that he cleaned the garage over a week ago, and the stuff is still moldering away, undoubtedly ticking off any remaining neighbors that were still talking to us up to this point.

The best part of taking these photos, though, is what I noticed in the corner by the garage door.  See those chairs?  Our friends borrowed them for their son’s birthday party—on December 19th.  They returned them—on December 20th.  Basically, those chairs have been sitting there, completely unnoticed by hubby or myself, for over a month now. 

 We make quite a pair, don’t we?

This time, we got us a nice shiny new set of calipers to go along with the rotors and brake pads.  The price difference two weeks makes?   About $100.   Now, don’t get me wrong—I like a nice pair of calipers just as much as the next person, but for that price, I can think of a few other things that might excite me a little more. (Like 1.5 tanks of gas—okay, that’s not much more exciting.  I give up).

In other words?  Procrastination doesn’t pay.

 What kinds of things do we procrastinate about at our house?  I don’t think there’s enough space on the internet to list them all.  Honestly. But I’ll try to throw out a few.

Some procrastinations are small.  For example, I procrastinate about buying various items at the store.  Toothpaste (yes, friends, that not-so-fresh-breath is sometimes me), toilet paper (according to my husband, you can cut up used socks and use them instead—a fraternity house secret), and food (hey, we all needed to go on a diet anyway), just for starters. 

Sometimes, the procrastinations are bigger.  Like the fact that we have yet to get our daughter a social security number or a birth certificate.  The midwife told us those in power like this to be done within 3 weeks of the birth.  Alas, our daughter is over 3 months now, and still without a country to call her own. 

This may not seem like a big deal, unless you knew that we had a home birth.  Apparently, if we don’t do this at some point, she will not be considered a citizen of the United States.  What I am wondering is, is it possible to be a citizen of nowhere?  How does that work, exactly?  I mean, I ‘ve heard of dual citizenship, but never no citizenship.

 But I digress (or, you might say, I procrastinate about procrastinating).  We also procrastinate about doing laundry (it saves the environment), replacing brake pads (we’re single-handedly keeping the rotor-making companies in business), and picking up dog poop (it’s free fertilizer, if you leave it long enough).  We didn’t have a crib mattress until our baby was two months old (hey, I needed an organic one, and you actually have to drive further than a mile to get those), and as for cleaning out the refrigerator?  Well, making your own penicillin does have some benefits, I guess.

Why do we procrastinate?  I honestly don’t know.  I mean, it’s not as if I really believe the toilet paper fairy is going to come make a delivery at our home (unless she just made a drop off in our trees—but I’m pretty sure that’s the kid who lives down the street, the little bastard).  And it’s not as if we think our friends are going randomly drop by and say, “Oh, I was just passing through, and thought I would bring you a crate of Charmin–it’s so squeezably soft, you know.”  (but friends, if you’re reading this, it’s not a bad idea—especially if you think you might need to use the john).

But the beauty of procrastination is, you can do it anytime, anywhere, anyplace.  In fact, I was able to procrastinate on about a billion projects, just by writing this blog.