HE SAID. SHE SAID. WHO’S THE BOSS?
Catharine and Duncan have been together 15 years and have two boys aged 10 and 12. This week they discuss living with a procrastinator (guess who that is!).
Famous last words… “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
SHE SAID
My husband had his 40th birthday party when he turned 42. The slight delay in proceedings was due to the fact that he insisted on organising the event himself.
Granted we had our second child Sam three days after the original birthday. So a delay of two or three weeks made sense. But two years?
Welcome to Duncan’s wonderful parallel world in which time is entirely elastic.
In which “tomorrow” is a synonym for “next week”, “next month” and in certain fascinating cases “next millennium”.
Blinds need cleaning? One approach is to follow up on the message that’s been on the kitchen blackboard for two years and actually call the blind cleaner. But an equally effective approach is to simply wait for the blinds to rot and buy new ones. Problem solved.
Promise you’ll order the turkey for the big family Christmas your wife is doing all the cooking for? Obviously you’ll do your bit. Doesn’t mean you need to do it this Christmas. It comes around every year after all.
My husband will, of course, argue that I’m a control freak who is obsessed with divvying up household chores, ticking off to-do lists and planning every detail of our lives five years in advance.
He could also quite reasonably point out that if something is so important to me I should just do it myself.
But therein lies the wonderful trap of living with a procrastinator. When I do just that I’m committing the mortal sin of “Taking over as usual” or worse thinking “I’m the boss of everyone”.
Obviously I’m not “the boss of everyone”. I just have a superior sense of what needs doing, how it needs doing, why it needs doing and when it needs doing. I have no idea at all why my husband nods and smiles when I present him with my latest list – and then proceeds to ignore it.
HE SAID
The world can be easily divided into three sorts of people. Control freaks who try to organise their lives minute by minute; more easy-going folk who like to go with the flow and then there are people like me, who would go with the flow but find even that rather hard work.
We are those few, those happy few who love to procrastinate, who love to follow the sage advice of Mark Twain who said: Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after.
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7 Responses to this article
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liza July 12, 2012
Time is relative !
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Ro. Watson July 12, 2012
I enjoyed this article~I have an embroidered cushion “after all, tomorrow is another day”~ meanwhile I wonder if Clarke Gable really had bad breath. If so, was this due to being slack with his toothbrush?
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sami July 12, 2012
I’ll comment properly on this later…
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Van Essa July 12, 2012
I am a procrastinator and my husband is a finely tuned gotta have everything perfect sort of chap. We have managed to have a reasonably good relationship for 30 years now.
But he doesn’t quiet understand my need to just go with the flow (afterall, we will all be dust one day and none of this really matters), he needs things done his way (which apparently is the perfect way to do things).
It keeps us both on our toes.
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The Huntress July 12, 2012
Haha. I’m a procrastinator and so is Mr. Huntress. It’s great, nothing ever gets done, neither of us care and we’re happy.
But when the 2 of us throw ourselves into one task with enthusiasm we become a power couple. This only ever happens when we having a party and we take over the kitchen as a duo. So, that’s approximately once or twice a year LOL
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Royce July 12, 2012
“Do it now” is my motto….
Whenever it occurs to me that a job needs doing, I do it immediately!Sadly this means that the thing I was doing is put off while I run off to do the thing that has just occurred to me… and …. and……
Then it occurs to me that I need to do something else. sigh…
