…the next time you are stuck for words. There it is, right on the tip of my tongue:

The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Ever have one of those days when you throw all caution to the wind and say what comes to your mind the second it comes to your mind?

Uhm… I had one of those days yesterday.

My wife was using my laptop. On that laptop, we both have user accounts, as does our 17 year old son.

Wifey: Why does your account have your picture and our son’s account has his picture, but my account has a picture of a dog?

Me: I don’t know. I was afraid to pick a picture you wouldn’t like.

Wifey: But a dog?

Me: Well, it is a female dog…

Wifey: (Cold, murderous stare that says “Why don’t you just go to bed and get a good night’s sleep… oh, and pay no mind to these rusty, blunt scissors.”)

Me: What?!? What did I say?

For some reason she was insulted.

P.S. I wrote this post on September 8 and scheduled it to be published in the future… September 9 to be specific. I’ve gotten enough feedback, verbal and written, over yesterday’s post that I feel the need to add a little editorial note to re-establish my neutrality, or indifference as the case may be, with regards to who pays the price for my smartass-ous-ness. There have been plenty of posts here and there where I was on the receiving end of a verbal jab… all in the name of humouring you, my adoring public. I will attempt to curb the collateral damage as best I can. (This rationalization comes to you courtesy of the letter “Y”, the number “12″, the warning comment from Deb, the wagged finger and scolding comments from Kym, and the confused stare from Gary.)

Lights… camera…. swallow!

My wife had a capsule endoscopy procedure done today. It’s a medical procedure where a camera inside a pill-sized capsule is swallowed to give the doctors a good visualization of the digestive tract. She had to wear a harnessed computer with and octopus of sensor tentacles taped across her upper torso that would receive the images transmitted by the capsule from inner space. She wore this for 8 hours today.

To prep for this, she had to fast… and be flushed out. She had to drink this Pico-Salax shtuff to make way for the camera and the clarity of the photos it would share. I can’t speak for her experience, but in preparation for another slightly more intrusive procedure myself, I had to take this wonderful stuff. Ironically, it tastes like shit. After you drink it, you have to follow it up with Lake Huron. The water flowed through me faster with each glass I would consume. Eventually, the water was not only clear when it came out the other end, it was still cold. Try it sometime… it’s a great party trick. But I digress…

She had been fasting since yesterday morning… having nothing but water, white cranberry juice and lemon flavoured Jello. Having been there before, I figured I had license to do a little playful ribbing, humming “They call it yellow Jello…quite rightly. They call it yellow Jello…” “Oh, honey, don’t be jealous of this sandwich… really, it’s not so good. I cut this home-made bread a little too thick, the peanut butter is creamy, and the jam is sweet. Not very good.”

The poor girl. She suffered it out though, like a trooper. She had to wait four hours after she swallowed the pill to have a glass of water, and another four hours before she could eat. That would make it 36 hours between meals. Eight hours and thirty seconds after she swallowed the pill, she was face and eyes into a plate of homemade macaroni and cheese.

You guessed it, “They call it yellow elbows…. with cheddar. They call it yellow elbows!”

I’ve written about procrastination before. It was a short post and I intended to come back to the topic to expand. I just never got around to it.

Seriously. Procrastination is a real problem for me. There’s plenty of stuff, particularly around the house, that needs to be done and that I keep putting off. They say that the first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem. Uhm… I could write a post a day for a year, each on a different topic, and not get past that first step on any of them. But, I’ll try not to let that get me off topic. Actually, that IS the topic.

One of the main reasons I procrastinate is that there are so many projects I want to start and so many chores that need to be attacked, that I sometimes get simply overwhelmed and don’t start any of them. It’s simply so much easier to make a peanut butter and jam sammich, pour a glass of milk, grab the remote control and watch reruns of Two And A Half Men. And while the food is yummy and it’s fun to watch Charlie make a fool of Alan, it doesn’t get shit done.

If the first step to a cure is admitting you have a problem, then the second step must be to make a list of the things you must do to fix the problem. In my case, that list is my anti-procrastination to-do list. So… here goes:

• Finish scanning my photos: I’ve done this in spurts, but it’s been on my mental to-do list for two years.. Lately I’ve started it up again, but there still plenty that need to be done.
• Organize my basement and shed: I’ve also done this in spurts. Occasionally, I’ll spend an hour or two or eight in one or the other, and “find” a couple of garbage bags worth of junk or “organize” enough so there’s room to navigate the area without having to climb over stuff. But for some reason, I stop there. Or I’ll decide that something needs to be built or renovated to make it easier to be organized. The efforts I put into avoiding or delaying the actual work truly amazes me.

Note that I’ve mentioned the above two items before. My New Year’s Evolutions post 8 months ago promises that I’d progress on these.

But there’s more:

• There’s a few handyman jobs around the house that need a finishing touch. Whether it be sanding down the rough edges on cupboard doors I’d shortened 5 years ago or nailing a baseboard back on the wall in the living room from my hardwood flooring project 6 years ago, I’m guilty of not putting the finishing touches on some of my projects.
• There’s a couple of repairs necessary that I’ve been putting off. My driveway has a couple of major cracks and a pothole that needs filling. The light on the side of the house needs replacing. I’d replaced the light once, but after a month it failed. So, that’s kind of only half-procrastination. But the driveway… I bought the pavement patch in May. It’s still sitting in my shed, probably hardened and useless by now.
• I’d been planning a couple of creative projects as well. My neighbour has a mini-deacon’s bench in her front hall. She has promised to loan it to me so I can replicate it for my own front hall. It it takes is a little lumber, a weekend, and gumption. I also have every intention of putting in a stamped concrete from pathway. I borrowed the stamp two years ago… Nuff said.

Ok… I’ll stop there. I’ve sufficiently exposed my list. On the off chance that my wife will read this, I’d better keep the list a little short. Trust me, there’s already enough on this list to ensure she cures my procrastination forever.

While that might sound good, given the topic of this post, I’d rather not rush it.

Saturday. Sometimes I have the day to do absolutely nothing, nada, nudding at all. On those days, I might sleep in, get up, shower, get a coffee, have a leisurely breakfast, and then maybe cruise around to the local hardware store or Costco or wherever looking for an excuse to spend money I don’t have.

But today… well that was a different story. Last week I started staining my fence and deck and I was set to finish that this week. My plan was to get up early, go for a haircut and then I was going to stain all the uprights on my deck and give the floor of the deck a quick once over with a roller as a second coat. Then I was going to go over to my neighbours and to some odd jobs for them… They needed some bracing installed along the bottom part of their fence and they wanted to have landscape ties installed around the flower beds out back.

That was the plan. A good honest handyman’s day’s work, a cool shower, and a good feeling that I didn’t waste my Saturday. But that’s not what happened. Not exactly.

Last evening my son asked if we could go to a couple of car lots in the morning looking at cars before he went to work. Sure, I said. I’ll just inject that little task into my plan… perhaps I’ll postpone the haircut. We left this morning around 9:30, picked up one of his friends and headed to the Dodge dealership. From there we went to Tim Hortons to get a coffee and went to the Hyundai dealer. After a little looking around and kicking tires, I decided we would head home. It was 11:00. I dropped my son’s friend off at his place of employ, and headed home. We were almost there, when we saw something cross the road. From a distance, it looked like some sort of bird, but it looked a little different, somewhat out of proportion. As we got closer, we realized it was a duckling. A single solitary duckling, in the middle of a subdivision. Nothing but concrete, asphalt, and lawns. No ponds, no marsh, and no sign of momma duck and/or a string of other little ducklings. This little guy was stranded. So, my son got out and chased the little bugger down and scooped him up.

“Can we keep him?”, said my 17-year-old son. Uhm. I don’t think so. It’s a duck. We’ll be calling the SPCA for some advice. So, that’s what we did. The SPCA took my name and number and said someone would call us back. In the meantime, my son laid the duck down on the back deck and it saw an escape opportunity and made a beeline for the edge of the deck and leaped off the edge to freedom under the neighbour’s deck. While my son was chasing it down, the forest ranger’s office called. (All I could think was, I don’t want to tell this guy that, in the three minutes since I left my name with the SPCA, the duckling outsmarted us and got away.) I explained to the dude how and where we found this little bird and asked for advice on what to do with him next… something that didn’t have “a l’orange” in the answer. He said to bring it to the nearest pond, perhaps Centennial Park, and set it free. Perhaps it will merge in with another family, grow up to be a strong healthy adult duck, and come back someday to rescue us from a fire or something.

So, off we went to the park. It was 11:30 by now. On our way there, I remembered that there was a big car show at Centennial Park. The Atlantic Nationals were in town and 1600+ antique and scooped up cars were going to be strewn about all around the park. Shit. That’s ok, we’ll go to Jones Lake. It’s a nice lake with walking trails all around it. Super.

Then suddenly, my cell phone rang. It’s my neighbour, Rennie, calling from my house. Hey Steve, where are you? He explained that he and his wife, Lorraine, had gone to Kent Building Supplies to pick up a couple of sheets of lattice, and couldn’t get them into his car. So, he left Lorraine at the hardware store and came back to see if I would go back down with him in my van to pick up the lattice. Oh, and hurry up please, Steve, cuz Lorraine is pissed at me. Ok, Rennie. I’ll be just a few minutes. But why don’t you go pick up Lorraine and bring her home. Kent will hold the lattice until we get there.

So, we arrive at Jones Lake. Yup, it does have some really nice walking trails around it, but not much of an easy access to the edge of the lake, at least not where the other ducks are hanging out. We drove up a little side street bordering the lake, got out with our little boxed duckling, walked to the edge of the tree line and peered into the woods lining the lake, looking for an easy path to the shore.

“Excuse me. Sir. Can you come over here?” I turned around, and there’s an old lady on her front porch across the street, waving me over. Ok… now I’ve got to explain to this old lady that we are just rescuing a duckling, not looking for a place to dump a body, or worse yet, potential recyclables. Turns out, she simply wanted me to take her flower box off her front rail, get two different pairs of pliers, and attempt to re-bend her wire flowerbox holder so it wouldn’t lean too much. “My husband is disabled, so I figured I’d watch for the first handsome young man to come along and ask him to help.” So, did you get tired of waiting? I fixed her flower box wire-thingy, but not before I skinned half the skin off several knuckles. It’s so hard for me to slam my fist into a metal railing after a vice-grip slips and NOT curse and swear.

After some chatting and several “thank yous” I was back on my mission to free the duck. We found a place that brought us to the water fairly easily, but it was nowhere near any other ducks. This place will have to do. It was after 12:00 and my son had to get to work by 1:30. That same duck, who, when placed on our deck bolted like he was racing in the Kentucky Derby, just sat in the box when we tipped it on its side within three feet of certain freedom. After about 5 minutes of gentle coaxing, the duckling was on his way. Once he splashed into the water and swam just off shore, he chirped gleefully as if to say, “Thank you, nice gentlemen. Hey, where the quack is my mommy?”

Now, I still need to rescue two more ducklings. The ones who attempted to fit two 4 by 8 sheets of lattice into a Hyundai Sonata. I rush home and Rennie is waiting for me on the front step. He’d gone and retrieved Lorraine already. “So, Rennie, I don’t understand why Lorraine would be mad at you.” Well, Steve, I tried to tell her before we left that the lattice wouldn’t fit. But she said we got it in your van before and the stuff bends fairly easily. “Don’t tell me, Rennie, that you used the I-told-you-so words…?” Well, kinda. “Rennie, Rennie, Rennie. You are 65 years old, and married more than 30 years. Don’t you know that you have a choice? You can be right… or you can be happy. Never both at the same time.” Sigh. Yeah, I know.

We went to the hardware store, picked up the lattice and came back home. I sat, had a glass of Pepsi, and headed out to start my busy day. 1:30 pm. Start by busy day? Start? Then why am I so exhausted already?

So, I stayed out in the yard, staining my deck until after 7:00 pm. It’s now, Sunday morning, and I’ll have to go out and start the rest of my Saturday list.

As I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought two things. I wish it had rained this weekend and I need a haircut.