This is what happens when you, that is, I, procrastinate: today is almost gone and I'm just getting to my blog for the day. Procrastination happens when you get too busy doing other things, perhaps not useless, irrelevant things, just things that took precedent, whether by choice or by necessity. I'm certainly not going to tell you what I did today; that's for my diary to know. I'm not going to castigate the fact that I procrastinate (couldn't resist that internal rhyme) , because sometimes the act - no, it's not an act because it's inaction - sometimes, then, the neglect of a prescribed or assigned activity can provide relief or even lead to innovative achievement. When I moved from Stratford to Toronto, lots of boxes didn't get unpacked right away. That means I didn't unpack them. Months, almost a year later, I found a cardboard box on a high shelf in a closet and opened it, wondering about the contents. It was clothes that needed mending and though some of them still possibly fit the people who used to wear them, they were either out of season or too tacky to revive. What a relief! Coupons provide a similar pleasure when you examine them and see that the expiry date has passed and you can toss them with a clear conscience. I do not procrastinate about food because, as I've said before, I'm the Leftover Queen. I never let food go mouldy or sour or stale or dried out. And as a writer I have always prided myself on never missing a deadline. Procrastination is a no-no there. That's not to say that one doesn't often wait till the penultimate moment to complete an assignment. Don't knock last minute inspiration, though. One could call it productive procrastination. Someone I never heard of (I looked it up) called procrastination the thief of time. I guess it depends on what alternative use you've made of the time you've stolen from. Or not. I can't sew and I hate sewing, or maybe I can't sew because I hate sewing . Anyway, my line is that if I lose a button off a garment I have to throw it away -- well, sometimes not quite so drastic as to discard it, but if decency has not been threatened, then I keep on wearing it buttonless. Know what? It's now tomorrow so I can put this off until the day after.

Soon I think maybe I will make a list of blog subjects, a list of assignments to keep me going. Off the top now, have you noticed that your computer puts words in your - not, not your mouth, - in your copy? I wrote keep without the k, and before I finished, smart-ass here thought I wanted to say eel. Wrong. I have a friend who wanted to write Pringles, the classy curved potato chip you can't stop eating, but the computer wrote pregnant. You can't get pregnant from eating Pringles. Even I know that. Then there's that classic typo, and this was in the days before know-it-all computers, the one by which the woman wanted pubic relations. Typos and errors often lead to discoveries you might not have made yourself. I think that's how I discovered hidden potent meanings in run of the mill end (sic) phrases. Hand-in-glove becomes handing love, for example, and is useful for a run-on line in poetry. I started collecting these double meanings (not double-entendres) and I have little scribbles here and there as I have stumbled on them. Oh, dear, the bits of paper one collects. Joan Didion compares this gathering of little bitts and thoughts and ideas to a ball of string. No single piece is worth much but you save it and wind it round - what? - a starter bead? (like the irritating bit in an oyster), in the hopes that it will develop into a pearl. Or maybe just a large ball of string. That's the chief hazard writers are prey to, the hazard of hoarding paper . We are incapable of throwing away a piece of paper with some writing on it, even a grocery list. That of course reminds me of two great grocery lists. I read that Florence Nightingale never threw anything away and social historians are delighted to study her grocery list. And the grocery list in "Canticle of Leibowitz" (a wonderful novel by Walter Miller), found near a destroyed bomb shelter, becomes the icon of an illuminated manuscript: dill pickles and pastrami immortalized! (You have to read the book.) What next?