Procrastinating Christmas Pack Rats Clean out their Den

It's funny how much earlier Christmas rears its ugly head this time of year. I've been seeing merchandisers and retailers put up their Christmas stuff right after Halloween. Even before the kids can get a filling or two at their dentists' office, they're being bombarded by Christmas marketing. Kids are no longer going to look out for Santa Claus on Christmas day, but rather look for special deals on the day after Thanksgiving! I know I was doing that after I realized the dubious existence of Kris Kringle. My parents were frugal as hell, and any which way I can help them find a deal on a new toy I wanted, I was there.

Nowadays, Christmas is a pretty miserable time of the year for me. Ever since my family and I were forced to move from one house to another on Christmas Day in 1995, I've had some pretty bad Christmases. That year, my parents just realized that if they moved, they would take advantage of a Capital Gains tax break on the house they were about to sell. So X-mas was reserved for moving a shitload of crap (quite redundant, eh?) from one house to another. My parents never threw anything away. In fact, since I moved from their house in 1999, they've converted my room into a storage room. It's piled high with boxes of crap they'll never use, and never needed in the first place.

In a desperate attempt to not turn into a packrat like my brethren, Jo and I (with the help of AC), have been cleaning out out house. We've only lived in it for 5 years, and we have acquired so much useless crap! It's a work in progress, but every week, there's less and less clutter. And I'm finally feeling like I could breathe a little. Not only are we getting rid of worthless crap, we're also getting our shit organized! No more looking for bills in a pile of papers, or worrying about finding our property tax statements. It's been much more enjoyable.

Now, I've resolved even before the obligatory New Year's resolutions to work on my procrastination. I have a nasty habit of putting things off until the last minute, and it's added a tremendous amount of stress on my life. I remember in high school, how easy it was to procrastinate because everything came so easy to me. But boy, in college, did I get my ass kicked when I didn't keep up on my studying. You'd think I would learn my lesson from that, but I would procrastinate at projects at work, too. Most of the jobs I've had in the past 5 years has required a tremendous amount of multi-tasking. Ofcourse, I would always perform the easy and desirable projects first, like actual teaching. I would put off writing reports, doing mundane office work, until the last minute.

All this leads to a very disorganized life, and I'm one who likes to function without chaos. It's a battle between procrastination and organization, and the former seems to always win out. No longer. I've been taking big steps in working out my issues, including reading a handbook on procrastination, and listening to an audio tape about how to overcome it.

I think one thing that Jo cannot stand about me is my constant procrastination. So I've been trying hard to keep her stress levels down so that her endo doesn't come back with a vengeance. I can truly see how much of a toll it takes on her. Before, I had the excuse that I was really tired because of my sleep apnea. I think it's made me chronically lazy, too. But now, I've been feeling really rested and content, now that I've been sleeping with my C-pap machine. So there's no more excuses for being a lazy mf.

Well, this blog went from Christmas marketing to my parent's rodent tendencies to our fall "spring" cleaning to my procrastination. I've been meaning to blog about my procrastination for the longest time; I've just been putting it off.

Starting to hit the wall

It's 3 am, and I'm working alone at the group home. I've been up since 1-2pm today, so I didn't get much rest. I've was cleaning the garage all day, too. To top it off, I come into work at 10pm and MB's in the Quiet Room. He had been in a 1/2 hour, 3-person restraint, and now he was calming down. I was thankful he hadn't saved that for me! Nevertheless, I was counseling MB until 1am. Little fucker's got some major issues. Though I believe in people's innate ability to change and strive to be the best person they can be, I don't have much hope for MB. He's violent towards women, especially women he has affection for. He has an infatuation with one of our staff members, EF. Apparently, no one had really talked to him about it until now. And it's been at least 8 months since he's exhibited any signs of a crush. Predictably, he would praise her one minute and then curse her the next for no apparent reason. He's tried to assault her many times already. What's good about today's restraint and seclusion that it was with two chicks and a fresh green staff member. Just his third menotr training shift! Better learn now than never. MB is usually a messy restraint, too. I don't think he had been restrained in a while, at least 6 months. But the boy has gotten BIG! He's already 13 (right now, I'm listening to his fuckin' little mermaid CD that he always has to play when he goes to sleep. I hate that friggin' red headed mermaid's vocie!). And he's naturally muscular. I can picture him in adulthood, beating his wife or raping some old chick. It fucking sucks, but it's the reality.

I hadn't eaten dinner, so I made myself a big taco, complete with sour crema, salsa, and taco-flavored ground beef. That's one aspect of working overnight that I don't like: I have 1/2 to 1 more meal a day than I usually do, so I've gained at least 20 lbs. since I started working here 4 years ago.

If that's my only complaint, then I've got a pretty good gig. Check out the perks:

-I get to go on the internet and work or fuck around. Granted, I have DSL at home, but I get a lot of blogging done here, and I also work on curriculum and correspondence for my other gig.
-I eat whatever the fuck I want. Since our grocery shopper has been getting stuff from TJ's (that's Trader Joe's grocery store where a lot of the food is organic and fresh), I've been eating a lot of snacks and meals lately.
-I get to hang out with the kids at night, which means playing tooth fairy, reading bedtime stories, and tucking in kids. It's a very satisfying part of the job.
-I get to hang out with the kids in the morning, which usually entails me fuckin' around with them. They're usually in a good mood.
-I'm usually a night owl anyways, so why not get paid for staying up?

The only real work I do is cleaning up the house, doing a SHITLOAD of laundry, washing dishes, vacuuming, setting up for holiday decorations, leading mentor trainings, making lunch for the next day's activities, and of course, checking up on the kids at night. I also have to call into a voice mail box every hour from 12am to 7 am. Just to make sure I ain't in la la land.

Don't get me wrong, there certainly are days when I wonder why I'm working here. My constant sleep deprivation can't be extending my lifeline. And my immune system definitely gets compromised. Not to mention the days when I come into work and a kid is smearing feces all over the wall, or when a kids bites and spits on you during a restraint, or when a kid is calling you every name imaginable, including simulating what types of acts he's gonna do on my mother. When a kid says this, I usually ask him, "Have you seen my mom?" Just kidding, Ma.

Whew! Almost fell asleep there, gotta call the VM box at 4am. 6 more hours and it's all over...

Song

Song
by Allen Ginsberg ("Howl")

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

Ah....the irony

It's been more than a week since we found out that we are four years closer to frickin' armageddon, and I'm not trippin'. Last Wednesday, the day after the elction, was a weird-ass day. I work in Berkeley, which is predominantly Democratic, Green, Libertarian, and Independent. Everywhere I went that day, people were in a haze. You could sense that people were in a state of shock, anger, sadness, you name it. I make fun of the hippie-Berkely-ite as much as the next red-blooded American, but how could we re-elect this numbnut after the job he's done the past four years?

With apologies to Alanis Morrisette, isn't it ironic?:

-Republican evangelicals claim that they voted to align with their moral values. How is it moral to indiscriminantly maim, kill, and destroy cities, towns and whole countries? If I were an Iraqi, I would ask, "If this is the freedom and democracy you want us to have, go stick it up your collective asses!" No wonder the world hates us. Our magnanimous, inflated opinion of ourselves is so sickening.

-Is capital punishment anywhere in the Bible? Then why the hell did Bush kill more people as the Governor of Texas than anyone in the hisotry of the US? I saw Kerry wearing a yellow Lance Armstrong (Live Strong) bracelet. Methinks Dubwa should be sportin' a WWJD? bracelet. What WOULD Jesus do? He certainly wouldn't kill, hate, terrorize, and exclude others in the name of God.

-When the failing economy, trillion-dollar deficit, unilateral foreign policy, and claiming to go to war as a "last resort" and fabricating a few reasons to invade another country are OVERLOOKED, because we can't stand to see two guys french-kissing, there is something extremely wrong. Our priorities are all out of wack.

-New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, and other metropolitan areas are touted to be the most culturally advanced areas in the World. WTF?!?!?! We got our asses handed to us by a bunch of redneck, holy-rollin' hillbillies with nothing better to do on a weekend than watch 30 cars continuously turn left for 3 hours in a row.

-Even though all of the unions, including mine (AFSCME), supported Kerry, and one of Kerry's major platforms was the tax cuts not benefitting the people who really need it (the middle-class and poor), we still elected this asshole.

-With all the hype that voter turn-out would be at a record high and young people and women would sway the vote to the democrats, it was all bullshit. Young people were busy watching P. Diddy talk about voting or dying on MTV, and women were busy getting brainwashed by the right-wing Republican.

-The Democratic party stands for SHIT. Nothing. Crap. You name it. Instead of trying to appease themasses by hunting geese in a full-out camo one week before the election, Kerry should have said what he really felt. I think that if Bush, the biggest fucking liar of them all when it comes to Iraq, can still be trusted more by the American people than Kerry, the Democratic party has some serious thinking to do about their platform. Fuck it, support Gay Marriage, support the Right to Choose fully, support something, but do it with conviction, or else the American people will see right through your fake-ass camo.

Four more years, four more years, come on and say it wid' me, four more years, four more years....closer to the apocalypse.

Pictures of some sorry-ass people

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