Unfinished projects: what am I waiting for?

by Pat Laster

Before I try to talk out the answer to that question, here’s a PS to last week’s “millions” post that moves the ante up to billions.
A letter-to-the-editor in the state daily merits quoting. A. Luck of Maumelle wrote, “As a retired physicist, I’m pretty sure that among 100 billion galaxies, 100 billion stars [in] each, in about 14 billion years it’s very likely that there is or has been life someplace.”
And what about President Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill?
Now, to the title question. It might be more aptly called, “Projects-in-progress.” Same thing, but a less indicting phrase.
The hedge-trimmer with its 100 foot cord rests on the portable plastic box of novels I took from the car trunk when it had to go to the body shop. (A falling oak branch bashed in the roof.) The trimmer has been in the house for at least a week.
Plans were to continue bonzai-ing the boxwood by trimming the umbrella of leaved branches. Maybe it’s not boxwood but some type of non-stickery holly. These other two shrubs--compact, low growing-- beside these three taller bushes from which I’ve trimmed off the bottom branches, are more like boxwood.
The wheelbarrow has stood in the same place for at least two weeks where I worked on the north sassafras grove-rock garden. Darkness fell as I labored. Intending to take up the project the next day, I left all tools out, hidden by snipped branches of privet and sassafras sprouts. Since both species produce runners at the soil line, they appear wherever they find sun and room.
The two brush piles are a different matter. It has been too dry and they are too large to burn safely without several “hands” around to guard against spreading. I don’t want to risk doing what Dad did several autumns. While burning leaves, he set the woods ablaze.
I have thought to ask the nearby fire department officials if they needed to do a practice burn. But I procrastinate. For days and days, weeks and weeks.
One columnist friends reports that he works for five minutes and rests for ten. I work for one day and not again for ten days. He can see the results of his work better than I can.
Then there’s the paint job I began in the kitchen. Do I have the decorative plates and mugs attached to the space above the cupboard doors? No. Do I have a reason? No. The ladder rests on the back porch a dozen steps away. But I have begun collecting the items to be hung. Anyone want to take bets about when I’ll get them hung?
I may have a good reason not to finish these projects yet. Last October, to speed things along at a state meeting, I foolishly volunteered to act as the contest chairperson for the following year’s session. That meeting happens this October 15.
Sixteen-hundred-eighty-eight sheets of paper with 844 different poems have passed my hands several times already in preparation for awarding prizes (money-certificates) in 32 contests. All judges’ selections are in and I’ve begun stuffing the envelopes with checks.
Making out and signing 192 certificates will be the final step of this process.
Perhaps after National Poetry Day, I can finish my other projects.
c 2011, Pat Laster dba lovepat press