I procrastinated a lot yesterday and that was a good thing. My goal was to complete my GST report for the last quarter of 2014, and to telefile it, and I did, but it took a long time and a lot of procrastinating to get it done. The good news was that I did a lot of other things while I was avoiding doing what I had to do, and they were good, useful tasks (love that word) that were somewhere on a to-do list. So I felt pretty good at the end of the day and that carried over until this morning when I had a guest for breakfast - truly! - a guest, not an overnight leftover. It probably never occurred to you that it might be otherwise because I'm so old, too old for that sort of thing, whatever that sort of thing is, and you're right and I shouldn't have brought it up but I have a scintilla of memory with fading wisps of temps perdu.

Anyway, after that the day deteriorated, that is, the day didn't deteriorate but I did. Today I really procrastinated and it wasn't pleasant. Oh dear. If I had written my blog earlier in the day before it disintegrated, this might have been more cheerful, but I couldn't get started on anything. I frittered. Frittering is not a good way to procrastinate.

I still have to do my Icelandic homework. Well, you've heard this before, too: tomorrow is another day. I hope so.

"When an old woman begins to dote, and grow chargeable to a parish, she is 
generally turned into a witch, and fills the whole country with extravagant fancies, imaginary distempers, and terrifying dreams. In the meantime the poor wretch that is the innocent occasion of so many evils, begins to be frighted at herself, and 
sometimes confesses secret commerces and familiarities that her imagination forms in a delirious old age. This frequently cuts off charity from the greatest objects of 
compassion, and inspires people with a malevolence towards those poor decrepit parts of our species in whom human nature is defaced by infirmity and dotage."

That's from an essay by Joseph Addison (1672-1719) writing in The Spectator, the paper he founded with Sir Richard Steele in 1711. I've mentioned both of them before; I think of them often because of Starbucks; they used to hang out at the 17th-18th century equivalent, the coffee shops that became so popular after coffee from the New World began to replace, or at least compete with, tea. Addison wrote his essays in a more accessible style, different from the literature of the day. In a way, you could say he was a blogger. Anyway, I was looking him up because I've been thinking about older women and witches. Over the centuries they've had bad press. I'm pleased to see that Addison understood where it was coming from.

Because I've begun to write elder tales, not fairy tales but elder tales: stories with sometimes a hint of the supernatural and sometimes a hint of the fey (dotty?) qualities of older women. I'm giving them the names of flowers. Have you ever noticed how women (in the past) were given flower names? Daisy, Iris, Hyacinth (Cynthia), Lily, Rose, Clover, Petunia, Pansy, and so on. I think I want to write about an old woman named Bougainvillea. but it can wait.

Oh, dear. I have so many ideas and so little time left. Some other life. Anon, anon.