It's going to sound like rationalization and self-jusirficartion but as I muzzy along I find there is something to be said for procrastinating,on many levels and applied to different activities. In My Other LIfe, in the days before Perma Press, I used to look at the basket piled high with clean but wrinkled clothes and worry less about mildew than the fear that by the time I got around to ironing them, they wouldn't fit anyone I knew. The first grant I ever received to encourage me with my writing was from my husband: a Wylie Grant for Ironing. I used the money to pay someone to iron the clothes so I could use the time more creatively.

It didn't work with mending, though.

Now with coupons. I intend to clip coupons for discounts and freebies but I'm so happy when the expiry date arrives and I don't have to feel guilty about not using them. Some people feel that way about leftovers. They push food into the equivalent of a petrie dish at the back of the fridge and wait for the mould to spread so they are justified in throwing out the contents. I don't/can't do that. My first cookbook was about leftovers (Encore, The Leftovers Cookbook)

I think it's the feeling of relief that procrastination brings that makes it so appealing. Time is on your side. Wait long enough and nothing happens. What a relief.

You think, because I grew up in Winnipeg that I shouldn't mind the encroaching darkness of November as it slinks its way to the shortest day of the year. Wrong. I mind. Winnipeg may be cold but it enjoys a lot of sunshine, more than bleak Toronto. I should say, in TO's defence this year, that the days have been quite bright. But when the light begins to fade, shortly after 4 o'clock, I feel as if I'm late for something. Remember Robert Louis Stevenson's poem: "In winter I go to bed at night/And have to dress by candlelight./ In summer it's quite the other way/ I have to go to bed by day. " i spent one Christmas in Iceland because I wanted to see what it was like there on the shortest day of the year. It was quite Dickensian. Of course, they have electric light but every shop had a little kerosene lamp on the sidewalk outside the door every morning, to make up for shopping in the dark. Very cosy. I like cosy.