Gremlins on the kitchen bench

In my next incarnation I intend to be a tidy and organised person. In the meantime it seems necessary to put into practice some techniques towards achieving this desirable status.

It is time to register the car and to do all the necessary and associated things. I have a few days up my sleeve and so I thought I would get a wriggle on with it all,  be efficient and have a sense of achievement.

I keep all my 'to do' documents on the kitchen bench, and periodically flip through them to bring to the top of my consciousness whatever it is that must be done next. So when I went looking for one piece of paper, somehow it had disappeared. It was nowhere to be found, and this aggravating fact makes me question my own competence, memory, and sanity. Finally - I KNOW I had it in that pile only a few days ago - I abandoned the search and decided to ring up and get the people to process it personally for me by phone. A very nice man talked me through it all, and then I tried to pay. The credit card would not work. Enquiry revealed it was over the limit. It has been a very expensive month, and I did not monitor it carefully enough.

So I had to fritter away time and energy in going to the bank, withdrawing REAL cash, going to the other bank and handing it over. As there are even more bills to be paid in the coming week,  I will have to repeat the action. It has been necessary to mentally slap myself, and to severely utter admonitions to myself to become efficient and methodical,  NOT TO LOSE THINGS anymore, and do things straight away. Yes, I say to myself, tomorrow I am going to stop procrastinating. (Isn't that a lovely word?)

I thought I was making some slight progress, as I went through the pantry, to examine the quantity and quality of all the jam therein. This resulted in  my chucking out quite a few jars, and the pantry suddenly has much more room. And I won't have to go and buy more jars quite yet. How these trivial activities consume time and give some sense of purpose and achievement.

Just as it appeared that a modicum of order and control might be entering life, the act of drawing the curtains the other night resulted in the breaking of the parts of the curtain tracks which hold the hooks, so that the curtain is suspended from each end and nothing in between. Someone with a long ladder and sufficient know how and skill will have to come and see what has to be done, and I am desperately hoping it won't cost an arm and a leg.  These things are always a hassle.

Despite all this moaning and groaning, I spent some very pleasant hours this week with friends. Other kind friends gave me their tickets for the dress rehearsal of Turandot at the Opera house yesterday morning, which was most enjoyable.

There are many things to do which are interesting, enjoyable, and not stressful.  Crochet to occupy the hands and to periodically puzzle the mind, books to read, music to play, people to see, energy levels to raise, lassitude to overcome, years of bad habits to break. Goodness, life can be full! But of what? Therein lies the rub. 

Normal life and ordinary things take lots of time, and give some sort of sense of achievement, notwithstanding their relative triviality. They are in no way a substitute for making the larger decisions of life and the future, which remain unforeseeable and imponderable, but somehow they give some sense of progress being made. Time is occupied. Things get done. The larger confusion, the indeterminacy, remain, and as yet, no clarity has emerged, and no decisions are made. The future lurches awkwardly towards me.