Suburban Island:

I am go-to-bed-at-9:00-at-night tired. Of course, I am not going to bed at 9 at night. In my mind, Friday nights are for staying up late with the whole weekend stretched before me. I love that feeling and don't intent to sleep through the official start of my weekend.

And if you must know, I already tried to sneak in a nap right after dinner and it didn't work. That is because the activity in this house, which encompasses early-bird and night-owl schedules, never really settles down. When I snuggled up on the sofa this evening, suddenly so exhausted that I couldn't seem to move, I experienced the impact of this in a big-time way. First, there was the sound of my husband's voice drifting into the house from outside. Okay, I can block that out. Next, a door opens and closes. It opens and closes again. Maybe they are done. The phone rings. It's my daughter so I talk to her for a couple minutes. I snuggle down again, hopeful that it will quiet down now. The door to the garage opens. My husband starts running an air compressor. It sounds like a jackhammer. He leaves the door open for a minute to enhance the effect. It works.

Alice and Dinah

I would go upstairs and cuddle up under the covers in bed but I know that someone will follow me as if drawn by an invisible magnet. They will turn on the light, open drawers, run the shower, ask me questions, or the phone will ring again. Even worse, I could actually fall asleep in spite of all this and miss my Friday night. So I get up and force myself to get going.

I said goodbye to my daughter as she went out the door to a baby shower and headed down to my office. As I started writing this post, my husband came in and out of the office (since it leads to the laundry room) several times. His power to disturb my sleep was gone now so it probably wasn't as much fun for him as it could have been and he had to do some laundry while he was at it.

So, with laundry in the washer and dryer, this post almost finished, and a nice big iced tea within easy reach, I am starting to feel that this Friday night is working out just fine after all.

Do you ever notice how when you don't do something for awhile that you should do, and maybe even like to do a lot, that not starting up again begins to take on a life of its own. It's like something inside of you starts embracing procrastination until you almost feel overwhelmed at the very idea of picking up where you left off. The devil is in the details and it seems like there is always some little detail that gets in the way of just doing it.

This happens to me in lots of different areas of my life. For instance, This spring I struggled for weeks to find my exercise shoes, workout clothes, and class schedule all in the same span of time so I could go to the gym. Solution: I quit the gym this summer and saved $65 a month. Bonus: I never had to actually find all that stuff for working out or buy it over again.

Or take dieting. Dieting is great for putting off because there are so many ways you can go wrong. I can't find the copy of the diet, haven't made a shopping list yet, keep forgetting to weigh myself in the morning I am supposed to begin so I must wait another day to start, cannot locate the food scale, and so much more. Diet and exercise provide a cornucopia of potential excuses for not getting on with things.

I find this with blogging too. I have lots of good excuses for not blogging lately. My favorite one is where I say I will write again soon. But not this minute. And the minutes go by and turn into days, and weeks, and yes, now months. I guess that's how it got to be September and Suburban Island has been ridiculously quiet since the end of June.