superheroes

I’m A Pro… Crastinator

/ Diane Henders / 31 Comments

I just realized I have a superpower!  Ordinarily this would be thrilling news; but sadly, my superpower seems to be procrastination:

I usually write my blog drafts on Mondays, but we were in Calgary last week and our 90-minute flight home on Sunday turned into a 24-hour ordeal due to fog.  By the time we finally got home late Monday afternoon I was too tired to write (although I somehow found the energy to work on our upstairs renovation).  I promised myself I’d write my draft first thing Tuesday morning.

But Tuesday morning I slept in until 7:30 AM, and then a tech showed up at 9:15 to work on our security system; so I couldn’t get started until after he left.

Then I got sidetracked by a few more issues with our upstairs renovation.

At last I settled down to write; but my knuckles were dry and cracked from the work I’d done the night before, so I had to go and rub on some hand lotion.

That’s when I realized that my fingernails had grown ridiculously long.  (Okay, for me ‘ridiculously long’ means ‘a couple of millimetres’; but that’s irrelevant.  They were TOO LONG, and desperately needed to be trimmed.)  That used up some more time.

And while I was standing there clipping my nails, I noticed that the soap dispenser had grotty blobs of soap clinging to it.  So I had to clean it.

Then when I cruised by the kitchen counter on my way to my laptop, I got waylaid by the spiced nuts and caramel popcorn and homemade Bits & Bites left over from Christmas.

Many handfuls minutes later I managed to tear myself away from the caloric free-for-all and plop into my chair… only to discover that it was noon; and therefore time for lunch.  Dang.

After lunch I had to put a roast in the slow cooker so it would be ready for supper.

Finally at one-thirty I made it to my chair and started typing, mainly because my anxiety over the deadline had finally exceeded my urge to delay.

But if it had been a task I truly wanted to avoid, I could have procrastinated much longer.  I have a whole arsenal of excuses excellent reasons:

  • Planning: One shouldn’t dive into action without adequate planning, right?  (If you’re about to remind me of my usual jump-in-with-both feet tendencies… just… shhhh.)
  • Re-planning: Things change (especially if I’ve procrastinated long enough) so I have to plan all over again.  (See also ‘re-re-planning’ and ‘re-re-re-planning’.)
  • Cleaning house: That’s not procrastinating; that’s protecting our health.
  • Reading: I’m topping up my well of creativity.
  • Baking: Homemade treats are much healthier than bought ones.  These cookies might save our lives!
  • Research: To the untrained observer it might look as though I’m scrolling LOLCats, but I’m actually doing in-depth research into current memes.  For my books.  Yeah, that’s it.
  • Social media: That’s ‘advertising and promotion’.

Now that I’ve discovered my superpower, I’m working on my superhero name.  WaitWoman?  DelayDame?  SuperStaller?  One thing’s for sure:  My superhero suit won’t include a fuchsia cape.

But maybe I’d better do some planning and research before I make a final decision.

And I just noticed some dust that needs to be cleaned up.

And I’m out of cookies.

Oh, look!  LOLCats…

What’s your superpower?

What Was IN That Salad?!?

/ Diane Henders / 28 Comments

So, the other night I was gambling in Vegas with James Spader and a couple of Klingon women in 70s-style fun-fur maxi coats.

Then things got weird.

As I noted in I Dream Of Dillweed, I usually don’t remember my dreams unless I’m sick.  Well, physically sick.  Let’s not get into the delicate issue of mental health.

But the other night I had this vivid dream, and James Spader was in it.  I have no idea why; I haven’t watched TV for years, and the last thing I saw him in was Boston Legal.  Also, though he’s a fine actor, if I was going to dream of an actor there are lots of others I’d prefer to meet in my dreams, ifyaknowwhatImean.

The Klingon women made sense… I guess.  I’ve been a Star Trek fan pretty much all my life, but Klingon women aren’t really my type.  Though they could have been Klingon men in drag.  It’s hard to tell with Klingons.  Either way, they weren’t doing it for me.

Also, I was winning in Vegas, which is weird in itself.  I was playing video poker (my game of choice, so that was normal).  But the machine was spitting out real coins, which doesn’t happen anymore.  And I was chortling and stuffing the coins into the capacious pockets of the white painter’s coveralls I wore.

That was all fine until I got the Superhero Distress Call.  I thought my blogging buddy Tom was the only one who has an inner superhero, but apparently I do, too.  Sadly, she seems a little on the incompetent side.

In the first place, I got my cape on backward.  Which actually turned out to be a good thing because I’d forgotten to put on the rest of my superhero suit, so I was running down the sidewalk holding the cape closed over my bare ass.

But that started to make sense when I arrived at Superhero Central a few moments later, and it turned out I had the clumsiest superhero suit ever invented.

All the other superheroes were suited up and leaping into flight, and I was still struggling to pull my suit out of the storage locker.  It was stuck underneath its belt, which consisted of a bunch of heavy diving weights strung together on aircraft cable.

I was still trying to yank it free when the Bad Guy launched himself into the air from a black spiderweb trampoline.  (The Bad Guy was dressed like Robin from the old Batman comics, except he wore black gloves.  That actually makes a bit of sense, because I’ve always thought Robin was disturbing anyway.)

Fortunately, one of the other superheroes realized I was in trouble and came back to rescue me.  And he was a handsome superhero, too, which was nice.  In fact, he looked remarkably the way I picture John Kane, one of the characters in my books – no surprise, since I’ve been writing my fingers to the bone the last couple of weeks.

Problem was, he didn’t do anything useful; he just jammed a Cone Of Silence (anybody remember that from Get Smart?) over our heads.  And then I woke up.

Earlier that evening at the pub I had eaten what they called a “California Salad”:  Mixed greens with Brie, spiced roasted pecans, sliced apples… and laced with much-too-sweet cranberry sauce.  And no, I didn’t dream that, though I kinda wish I had – the cranberry sauce was gross.

But now I wonder what else was in there…