Figure Out Your True-Calling through Procrastination

Sometimes in an effort to avoid the necessary evil of whatever-it-is-that-needs-doing one can find their true calling. I've been using that one a lot lately, the true-calling theory, and have discovered that I could be a first-rate housewife, fitness planner, Facebook-stalker or cat lady. I'm not necessarily comfortable with any of these callings but they are there anyway. 

Disclaimer: These are my own personal tools of procrastination and in no way an indication of my lifestyle choices… 

1. Tea-Making: Endless cups of tea that I don’t drink. I’m not a fan of the stuff but if there’s something else to be done you can be sure I’ll need to boil a kettle and stir some teabags around a cup for ten minutes. Then sit, watching it go cold as I stare into space wondering what else I “need” to do before I get going with paying bills, writing essays, job applications … 

2. The Facebook Browse: But it’s not just a browse is it? Fast forward an hour and after boring myself to tears with the countless pictures of cute animals my friends share. I’ve fallen in love with some song writer half way across the world. I know the name of his dog, his soon to be ex-girlfriend and have figured out a way to meet him. The important thing to remember here is that I don’t act on this feverish acquisition of knowledge. I just pride myself on the ability to obtain it. Training for my future as an internet stalker for unhappily married couples. I could start a franchise? 

3. Routine Check on the Animals: I don’t even like animals. But they are here. So I feel obliged to communicate with them. This can result in a full hour whittled away trying to pretend the cats like me and getting the moronic dog to chase something other than his tail. 

4. Rearranging Clothes: When faced with something I’d rather not do I find myself folding clothes. Something I never do. Sometimes it even seems like I MUST rearrange my drawers. This involves tipping my folded clothes on the floor and then shaking them out and refolding them into different drawers to justify the chaos I've caused. 

5. Paperwork: This is a last resort when faced with having to make business type phone calls. I will first open my file. I do keep one, stuffed with receipts and bills and grown-up things. I generally avoid it, and then when I need to do something adult: I tip it all out to sort before I can get on with the task in hand. 

6. Starting a New Exercise Routine: This is one of those methods of procrastination that can take up hours of my time. First there is the planning. The decision to commit hours of each day to pain. But what kind of pain? How many days off? Targets? Goals? And then the first-step: day one of the routine. So I leave the house: stride down the road as far away as possible from what I need to get done today. I scare the neighbours by lunging about in the garden and collapsing in broken heaps, only to realise that this plan is too much, tomorrow I will devise a new one.

7. Event Attending- Fail at life and party or succeed at life and avoid party. In order to avoid become a balding hermit on a mountain-top with cats for company I normally justify the fail-at-life option.

8. Matching Socks: I become possessed by the need to find all my socks their original partner in crime. Given that I've long held the theory that socks are eaten by the washing machine this can take a considerable chunk of the day. But I’m a romantic, obviously, anything in the name of monogamy.

9. Mopping the Floor: This only happens when I have to edit my novel. I get a page in and then realise the dirt on the floor is distracting me. It must be dealt with now.

10. Channeling my inner TV chef: When duty calls you can be sure I will think of a reason to spend two hours in the kitchen contemplating what sort of cheese will go best with tonight’s dinner (never mind the fact that my choice is usually limited to feta or cheddar), mumbling to myself as I dice onions and devising new ways to cook potatoes. 

The True Confessions of a Recovered Farmville Addict

When I was in America almost everyone I knew was playing some sort of Facebook game. It was hard to ignore the fact that computer labs were full of people: not studying, but pursuing a career in bad-gaming: students clicking away lives on virtual restaurants, farms and fish tanks.

It was scary, foreign. I couldn't wrap my head around it. Then someone told me they were particularly “talented” at these games. I signed up for Farmville, simply thinking that I would figure out how to win and then leave. That was the plan, to prove that there was no such thing as being “talented” at virtual reality.

For those of you who don’t know, Farmville is a virtual game on Facebook that allows you to pretend to farm. Armed with a mouse and an easy user interface you can plough, plant, harvest and buy farm goods to your hearts content.  It also tries to rip off addicts by getting them to enter credit card details to buy flashier farm houses and more land.

It started innocently enough, a bit of tilling and planting, no real addiction. But then I started watching my leader board. I was thousands of points down.

I was going to have to up the ante. I started trading in hay bales for extra points, designing my farm for maximum productivity, and calculating the most profitable crops per hour.

I’m sure I don’t need to point out that it was becoming tragic.

But it didn’t stop there, it escalated. I feverishly monitored the farms of others. Harassed friends to join and visit my farm. At one point I had the log in details for several members of my family and I farmed their plots too.  I spent hours making symmetrical borders, purchasing pretty wells, and garden features.

I still hadn't realised how bad it was and people were starting to comment.

Then the most ridiculous sentences started rolling off my tongue.

-I can’t make that, sorry, I have to expand the farm.

-Damn is that the time, I need to go harvest my raspberries.

I spent an entire night buying and selling hay bales and went up at least three levels, a monotonous task that involved clicking and more clicking.

The next day the other addicts started asking questions.

-So how did you get so many points so fast?

-What were you doing, in one night, did you buy points?

I smiled knowingly at them all.

-Simple calculations, seeing as you’re so talented at these games I am sure you can figure it out.

Then it hit me, I was hoarding my Farmville secret. I thought I was really something. I had been sucked in. I noticed others avoiding me for fear I would spout feverish monologues about my farm. So I forced myself to quit the farm, to sell it all and step away from fake sheep and palm trees. I was never, ever playing another Facebook game again, any game for that matter.

A year later someone showed me word twist…and well….

The One Teacher You Will Never Stop Blaming

I spent my junior cert years plagued by the Home Economics Teacher. Things might have turned out differently if it wasn't for her constant obsession with: order, cleanliness, organisation, bland food and boring sewing tasks. No thirteen year old in their right mind thinks making an apron or oven-glove is fun.  Now help them make a boob-tube or mini-skirt and you will have sewing converts for life.

But our issues didn't start there. Oh no, that’s most likely where they ended.

First there was her insistence on calling me “Aiiil-vaaaaa”. This ended in a three year long stale-mate. I wouldn't answer to it and she couldn't bring herself to pronounce it the correct way.

Then there was the first time we made cake as a class, I sat eating the licks from a spoon as we waited for the cakes to bake. Only to hear a deathly silence descend as she loomed over me hissing,

“And what do you think you are doing?”

“Eating the licks,”

“You do realize there are raw eggs in that”

“eh….yeah?”

“This is disgusting, never in all my days…” and so on and so forth, until I was a shade brighter than crimson and had vowed to hate her forever. Quite a serious vow, when made by a hormonally unstable thirteen year old.

I may not have helped our relationship when she performed cleaning drills.

Treating her shrill cries of: “I can see a grain of rice on the counter”

With: “Are you serious?”

Then there were her recipes which I doctored to my hearts content. When everyone else produced a perfect Victoria Sponge cake with neat jam fillings, I presented a hap-hazard chocolate chip cake, with chocolate filling and decorated it with enough Smarties to give a three year old a migraine.

 We bickered constantly. I produced my homework in crumpled sheets from my pockets and answered questions in the exam booklet as follows.

Give one reason why you would put a kitchen sink under a window?

So you can spy on the neighbours.

What is the best way to unblock a hoover?

Send your hamster up it to gnaw its way through.

She made things worse by making me sit alone, at the back of the classroom and intercepting all my notes.

Yes, Home Ec. was the bane of my existence, a class based on all the things I’d already been shown, with a teacher whose mind was occupied with beige slacks and how to make a perfectly symmetrical melon basket.

My mother unfortunately was in the middle of it all. Listening to me harp on about ridiculous levels of cleanliness and receiving notes home from my teacher about my slovenly ways and attitude problems (all completely unfounded as you can imagine.).

In the end I was banned from taking part in Home Ec. by my mother. I could do anything else, but she was not listening to either of us for another two years. It came out later that my mother had similar issues with her own Home Ec. Teacher and wasn't able to cope with the reminder.

In fact at the final parent-teacher conference, when my teacher was harping on about my homework being crumpled and all the papers I kept in my pockets my mother interrupted her to say.

“Does she have bad grades?”

“No, but-“

“Does she talk in class?”

“Well no, but-“

“Does she do her homework?”

“Yes, but I mean the pockets”

“Well” my mother said, standing up from the desk and delving her hands into her pockets. She started piling up the contents from her pockets on the table. Scrap, upon scrap of folded crumpled papers “She certainly doesn't pick it up of the floor.” 

She then stuffed the papers back in her pockets and marched out with her head in the air. I think she was projecting. That was the confrontation she always wanted to have with her own Home Ec. Teacher. Either way, if I ever get the chance, I plan on doing the exact same thing. 

Can You Tell If You've Been Spending Too Much Time Around Cats?

On the best of days I am hardly a people person: let alone a cat, dog or marsupial person. So it came as quite a surprise to me when I started relaying, in concerned tones, that I thought the cats were fighting. Not just any fight, oh no, I felt they were having a proper tiff and it threw off my entire day. Well not my entire day but I did spend five minutes considering ways to improve inter-cat relations. Then I spent another five wondering what had happened to me and then it became clear. I have been spending too much time with the cats. The signs were there and I ignored them. But now with the gift of hindsight I can share with you the signs that you too may be spending a bit too much time with your own feline counterparts.

1) You believe you understand how the cat is feeling based on the way it is carrying its whiskers.

2) You begin to empathise with the cat's feelings towards other organisms.

3) Your cat will not let you leave the house without it.

4) Your cat takes your chair and signals with it's paw that you may occupy another. 

5) Your cat becomes concerned for your safety and decided to accompany you on walking excursions. 

Trapped in IKEA: Contemplating Death by Swedish Furniture

IKEA is just one big domestic. That’s what I discovered on a recent trip. In a moment worthy of any martyr, I decided to accompany my mother. She can’t survive Penny’s without a stretcher and some wine gums. So I knew she’d need me. Anyway we had a list, what could possibly go wrong?

This is how IKEA works. It’s a journey. They try and make you go through a showroom, then the market place and finally a warehouse. Each room looks like it could house the Titanic. You walk for miles. But we weren't going to be those people, oh no, we had a strategy. We would skip the showroom, high tail it through the market place and arrive early to avoid the masses seeking perfect lampshades.

It started in the curtain section where happy-ish couples stood huddled in pairs bickering.

-You don’t even care

- I do, I do, and I just think you should get the ones you want

- See you never give me any support

- Ok, well what about this one

- That’s hideous, are you blind, you could at least take this seriously

We skirted past, around, and between them. Grabbed what we needed. Lifted our eyes to the heavens, thank god we’re not married – poor sods, poor miserable sods. They’d made the rookie mistake, they’d entered through the showroom and they have already been trapped in here too long.

It escalated by the time we got to the warehouse, the women had their neatly tied back hair falling slightly forward (presumably from tearing it out); make-up wearing a little thinner, tone pitched a little higher.

-Oh, ehm, I saw it in the catalogue, it must be here somewhere.

-You didn't take down the catalogue number or anything useful

-I can’t bloody well do everything

We were as naive as to comment. Yes comment. It’s a pity they take themselves so seriously, it’s only a curtain sure couldn't they just pick another one, some people.

Five minutes later we can’t find what we are looking for. We can see the exits but we have not located the “rail with the basket thingy” as my mother so scientifically puts it. It transpires that she has caught IKEA fever. She can’t leave without it. We must find it.

Fast forward an hour and I am sitting on a pile of boxes watching other customers whittle past, giving me the eye, the thank-god-you-are-the-one-trapped-in-IKEA eye. I feel like telling them their choice of embroidered cushion isn’t original. That EVERYBODY has had one going past. Everyone except the lady carrying a single plotted plant (you have to wonder what kind of personal problems she has to suffer IKEA for one measly plant).

All the “find it” computers have frozen from our frustrated efforts of keying in “rail thingy”. I’m trying to look innocent as other customers tap them in vain; can they arrest you for corrupting the IKEA computer system?

Eventually Mother finds her rail in the showroom that we had strategically avoided. We knew IKEA was laughing at us, she’d combed back through the entire place for her sin of avoiding their neatly arranged sofas.

But we were willing to give IKEA this one. It was only an hour’s delay and we are set for freedom, exit signs ahead. We were spirited, laughing, throwing our hands-up in a that-wasn't-so-bad fashion.

We crush into the elevator to freedom: couples that entered hand-in-hand are now standing about a meter apart. Both looking frayed at the edges and you can only overhear snippets of what they hiss at each other.

-You had your chance

- But

-We’re leaving

We smirk. We survived without so much as an argument. These here are lesser mortals.

We get to the car; on the way helping some frail looking old ladies along the way. Feel like we've done our good deed of the month, helping others escape.

Then it happens. Our great escape falls to the floor. We've lost the keys in IKEA. We are carting around half their plywood range and we have no keys. There is no way out. I sit on the flat packs again. Watch the other customers file past.

- There’s that girl again

- Maybe she likes sitting on boxes

I do well not to hurt them. She returns with keys a good half an hour later.

-I had to go through the whole place twice, someone eventually handed them in.

-I’m not saying you’re hopeless, but-

-Will we grab food when we pack it all in, I am starving. We can relax.

So we do. We grab lunch in the famous IKEA kitchen, which looks more like a canteen with a penchant for cheap sandwiches and mushy peas. At this point we know people must exaggerate. They eat here in sheer relief that the shopping part is over. IKEA cashes in on their fatigue, makes them feel like it’s a worthwhile experience.

We leave lunch, laughing. Can you imagine? We think we are free. We can’t find the exit sign though. End up going through the entire store again. We sprint through all the shortcuts. Muttering, no, no, no, you can’t make me buy anything else.

We get in the car, whiz out. Pay little attention, turn left or right or some wrong way. Think we are on the road to the motorway. We are blasting the radio, singing silly songs and then we round a corner only to see the monster that is IKEA grinning back at us.

We swear as always that we will never return. Never, ever again. Just like last time. Why in the name of croissants would we subject ourselves to that again?

But in a year or so it will have faded, the trauma will seem like something we made up. We’ll consider it, decide that the lighting fixtures are cheaper, Sarah got her very useful wardrobe there and the food is allegedly – amazing. So you go. Yes you do. You decided to spend the day cavorting about with Swedish furniture and furnishings. Your house will look modern, embroidered, and chic. After all who doesn't want their home to look like plywood grows from the floorboards? 

Ten Signs That The First Date Should Be The Last

1) He's undeniably prettier than you - Just walk away before someone else points it out, three months down the line, and you become bitter enough to throw imaginary knives at their foreheads and imagine all sorts of fruit that they resemble.

2) He weighs less than you - You want him to pick you up, not the other way around. There is nothing damsel-like about scooping a man off his feet. Is there?

3) He refers to his Mother at length - Presumably she's a nice lady... but we've all been subjected to Oedipus and Freud. Although we treat both with enough scepticism to flatten wild boar, there is still always the "what-if-Freud-was-right-all-along-complex" that Freud is working diligently on from beyond the grave. 

4) He spends more time arranging his hair than speaking - I don't care if it's a comb-over gone awry in the wind (well I probably do) or an intrinsically arranged Mohawk- leave it be! 

5) He speaks of his ex at length - This only ends one way, you and the ex both get emotionally beaten to a pulp and he tells some new-unsuspecting-girl about how both of you can't get over him. 

6) Any Mention of Marriage- It was hard enough being sensible enough not to order something you can't actually fit in your mouth (Despite the fact that a burger that size is probably exactly what you need to calm the nerves.), without having to also jokingly shut down the marriage and kids conversation. 

7) He forgets his wallet- I'm not saying he should pay for you - just maybe that he should at least pay for himself. A sugar-anything, you are not.

8)He hasn't showered in recent history - You know what you went through to get here: between tweezers, eye-liner and clothes that squeeze you. The least he can do is make sure you can't actually trace the movements of his last few days based on the debris on his clothing and beard. 

9)He asks for dating tips - It's probably not actually a date and you need to redefine what it is you consider a first date. It's best not to let on that you thought this was a date and perhaps make reference to some hotter date later in the evening... 

10) He quotes poetry endlessly at you - Just runaway now. Particularly if it's his own.

Why Monday is Evil And Can Lead You to Conclusions Such as I Want to Be a Guinea Pig

The most hideous place to be on a Monday is in school (in a Geography class) at about the age of thirteen, where nothing matters except that spot on your chin and the fact that you think everybody saw you stumble beside your locker at 9.01am. Well more specifically that Mr. Mathews saw you stumble and that due to your blush he has more than likely figured out your secret crush.

So you more or less end up looking a lot like this

Suddenly, as happened to me on one such occasion, there is a moment of light. Your teacher stops warbling and offers you a ray of hope.