Procrastination Bites Me Again

(Moving posts over from my old blog host. This one originally posted July 25, 2011)

At our house, procrastination is a fairly well established habit. I think it may have something to do with the fact that we get so busy that we often just forget to plan ahead. Two jobs, two boys, multiple sports, cub scouts– things like remembering to schedule a dentist appointment just don’t always hit the top of the priority list.

Of course, when you are surrounded by the kinds of families who DO plan ahead, the result is often quite frustrating. My dentist, for example, only has one Saturday a month of appointments. We were really consistent for a long stretch. (Most likely because we didn’t have quite so many activities) We’d schedule the next two visits while at that visit, and things went smoothly. Until, of course, the first snafu. One of those lovely Saturdays fell on a major Cub Scout event. Tony managed to get the boys in for a cleaning, but only because he has a pretty flexible schedule.

So, now it’s almost August, and time for the next Saturday visit. I’ll admit, I have known for a bit that the visit conflicted with ANOTHER Cub Scout event. I dropped the ball – sue me. When I called today to try to schedule for another time in August– any time, really, that being one of the benefits of the teaching profession – I found out that the rest of the world scooped me. There is quite literally nothing left until the end of August, when the boys and I are back in school. Yes, I could take a half sick day and take the boys out of school. I may just end up doing that. But as happy as I am with the success my wonderful dentist is clearly having, I’m still a bit annoyed.

It’s times like this when I curse my procrastination. Leaving things until (almost) the last minute usually fires up my creativity and helps me come up with some unique ideas. Even when I do plan ahead – for lessons and such at work – I often end up scrapping the old ideas as some last minute better plan jumps fully formed into my head. Apparently, that doesn’t work when scheduling dentist appointments. Who knew?