Donwannas.

[mrissa]

I have a really bad case of the donwannas today. So far I have cleaned and chopped strawberries, bell peppers, and cauliflower, cooked dog food, and done laundry in an attempt to avoid the things I don't want to do. Soon I will wrap my dad's birthday present. My dad's birthday is June 14. My brain suggested brightly that we could clean out the sock drawer. Or organize the pajama drawer (because having folded T-shirts in two neat piles is clearly not organized enough).

It's not that my house is otherwise so optimal that I have to resort to organizing the pajama drawer for cat-waxing. No. Nonono. It's that I am dealing with large amounts of brain rebellion for the things that actually need doing in whatever category. It's a PT day, and I'm fighting a headache, but really, things still need doing. Really really.

Still: it's one of those days when I feel like I'm dragging my brain behind me on a string, bump bump bump down the stairs.

For heaven's sake don't tell me something motivational. Tell me about your own cat-waxing.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I need to write next year's syllabi. Or I could read the rest of the Hugo nominees. Instead I'm going to finish my purple sweater and watch Criminal Minds, S1, for the umpteenth time. (In many ways it feels like rereading O'Brian, except I can knit while doing it.)

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

I went the other direction. Did malkatsheva's silly side planks and hung by my hands from a bar and did some pushups in an effort to avoid revising my coworker's prose.

Though really it needs to be done.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am about to go have a workout. Yesterday I watched a really bizarre Katharine Hepburn movie while riding the bike, though, so I'm a little afraid of what today will bring in that regard.

[aedifica]

Me, I'm catching up on LJ because I don't feel like I can focus very well on other stuff right now. My sleep schedule is closer to normal now but still out of whack from the last several days, and it's affecting my ability to brain.

I have gotten a little bit of Actual Stuff done today, but not as much as I'd like.

(And the mental image of bump bump bump down the stairs is very evocative!)

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Hey, maybe *that's* where this headache came from!

[eposia.livejournal.com]

I'm either a terrible cat-waxer or a good one, depending on how one defines the concept. Steve says that I miss the point, as catwaxing is supposed to be doing "non-useful" things to distract oneself from whatever tasks one is trying to avoid. I tend to polish the pets by doing other, still technically useful tasks -- ideally those that encourage puttering, tidying, or other activities that are normally distinctly non-urgent in completion schedule. This morning, I've responded to (some) emails, tidied up some LJ profile parts (long overdue), RSVP'd to a handfasting this weekend, did a load of dishes, made a couple of work calls, and still have managed not to complete either the work task that absolutely needs done or any writing. My animals are quite shiny today!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, you notice that the laundry and food prep are not precisely useless, so I'm probably not much better than you are in this sort of thing.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

I stayed up til 1 am last night playing Crayon Physics (http://www.crayonphysics.com/).

I have to meet with some folks soon to do an hourlong whiteboard session, which is a thing where a person stands at a whiteboard drawing machines and explaining how they interconnect and diagramming all the data flow, while the other people ask an endless series of questions. Today I am the person at the whiteboard. Sigh.

ETA: to clarify, whiteboarding is not catwaxing, since it's my actual job; hanging out on LJ instead of prepping for my whiteboard session is totally catwaxking.

[framefolly.livejournal.com]

What's "cat-waxing?" Where did this fascinating term originate?

(Clearly I am not doing the things I'm supposed to be doing)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know where it originates, but I'll bet someone here does.

It's displacement activity from useful (usually writing) work. Sort of "mop the moose and feed the bear" type thing. (Hmm. That reference is from I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words, but I've never heard it used that way outside my immediate family of origin. Whereas "cat-waxing" or "cat-vacuuming" gets used a lot in the writerly portion of my social circles.)

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Yesterday, instead of working on my novel as I'd planned to do, I cleaned my office. It was seriously easier for me to go through boxes in the closet and throw out 12 year old computer equipment than to work on my damn novel. A novel that I adore.

I spent about 4 hours on the office, and even went to Lowe's so I could get the parts I needed to finally install the new ceiling fan. That would be the ceiling fan that I got months ago, tried to install and instead broke my computer. When I got the fan I didn't notice that it can only be controlled by a wall-mounted switch, and installing one of those would require either A) an electrician B) me crawling around in the attic and pretending that I'm an electrician C) Option B) leads to failure, return to option A) or finally D) Option B) leads to failure, go to hospital. Yah. So I bought the little box you can stick in the base of the fan and turn it into a remote-controlled fan.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hurrah, fan!

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I have decided that my deep and abiding hatred of macs is reason enough for me not to have to do work today while I adjust to its quirks. (OMG, There is not enough hate in the world for this computer today. It was acceptable when I thought I was getting the good software with it, but that apparently wasn't ever part of the deal. I HATE.)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Ouch. My deepest sympathies.

I tried to use a Mac a little bit back around when they first came out, at work, and found that using a command-line graphics program and a weird graphics terminal (which I'd never seen before, any more than the Mac) was a MUCH easier way to prepare some diagrams for a presentation than Macpaint.

But then, I took against them the instant I encountered the ad gloating about the fact that you couldn't get documentation for them.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm keeping pretty current on LJ.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I'm supposed to be figuring out how to revise a KB article that has practically brought support and development to fisticuffs, and figuring out how to tidy up our documentation repository before we embark on the next project. Instead, I'm upgrading Adobe Acrobat and routing documentation bugs to the writers who need to deal with them.

[aedifica]

I misunderstood that at first as support and documentation OF fisticuffs, and wondered what kind of support it would need.

[aedifica]

I'm also catwaxing by looking up the words to "Sumer Is Icumen In" for a discussion elsejournal of whether it's the sede that groweth and the mede bloweth, or vice versa. Turns out it is the sede that groweth, but without the final e so it's just sed and med. And of course the wode springth nu.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Sing cuckoo!

I have been procrastinating, since about March, by Getting Rid of Stuff. Today a friend is coming to pick up twenty boxes of Stuff for a yard sale, only I don't think she believed me and I don't think it will fit in her car. Goodwill tomorrow, then.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I wish I was cat-waxing.

Instead, I spent the day pouring over the updated Carleton College website with JAWS for Windows, testing key-components for accessibility. Tomorrow I get to do it again with a different browser (Firefox instead of IE).

At least I'm being paid fairly for the job.

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

Must be something in the air; I have "crabbyashell" syndrome. Doing anything other than what I'm supposed to (ie. deadline work) makes it worse.

Except going for ice-cream. Because I give up today, honestly. Going for ice-cream seems...good.

[lotusice.livejournal.com]

*buys you an ice cream and one for me too and finds us a patch of sunlight to sit and eat it in*

[howl-at-the-sun.livejournal.com]

I pulled the covers over my head and -dreamed- about doing all those things that need doing.

[skzbrust.livejournal.com]

My catwaxing is putting together Fourth Street panels. Hee.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am getting excited over Fourth Street now that we have done Grandma's birthday and careswen's birthday and markgritter's birthday and only have my dad's birthday yet to go. (I am an event calendar person, not a time calendar person. This is also how I give directions: drive past the thing that used to be a Pannekoeken and turn left where the place used to be a Dunkin' Donuts, and if you get to the place they were going to make into a KMart, you missed it, go back.)

[spartezda.livejournal.com]

I installed updates on my computer and restarted an abominable number of times, dragged ferrets around on an afghan, then made lunch that did not come from a freezer box, chatted with a friend about the weather, and now I'm going to clean out the coat closet. Later I plan to watch a four-hour documentary series on hulu. Possibly after that I will back up my laptop's music collection.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Documentary of what?

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I went and weeded a friends garden today instead of my own.

[moiread]

Um. I hid in bed and napped and read things. (Outside world? What outside world?)

[ckd]

I recently dug out some computer games I hadn't played in over a year and started playing them again. Emptying the dishwasher, not so much.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Had a Vernor's instead of balancing the checkbook.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I've answered all the questions on questionswap. I made a running start at the software learning curve, too, but honestly, I should be better at that program than I am.

K.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

New Techniques in Catwaxing! A friend of a friend is presenting at the Diana Wynne Jones conference in Wales this summer, and she couldn't remember if a particular theme was present in one of her books. So I volunteered to reread it and tell her. Terrible fate, isn't it? (Unfortunately it's The Merlin Conspiracy, which isn't one of my favorites. Still, anything to help a fellow scholar!)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

*pat pat* There there, dear.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Wow, where to start with the cat waxing?

I've been known to sort strings of beads by color, and then by size.

Rearranging my Flickr sets is a favorite.

Basically, if something can be sorted, I will sort it. Even things that are already neat, sorted and organized.

[intrepida.livejournal.com]

I know a lady who actually _did_ vaccume her cats....

I finished reading a book that's only kind of related to my thesis, but really interesting at the day-job today.

[pameladean]

I'm supposed to be either boiling down my 16-page insanely-detailed novel synopsis into three to five pages that sound interesting and that sound YA, fixing the mess the last five years have made of the garden, or fixing the mess the last five years have made of my office and bedroom.

I've been doing an amazing amount of hiking this year.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yay hiking! I am jealous of your hiking. Soon maybe. My walking is still not consistent, but it's better maybe.