The procedure

So a while back, Dooce wrote a very funny (and also terrifying) post about reconvening the procedure, something she and her husband were finally able to do several months after their baby was born. D. and I have been reconvening the procedure with some regularity these last few weeks, an area in which we'd been somewhat deficient of late. By "late" I mean... a really freakin' long time. And by "we" I mean me.

So it's all fun and happy to reconvene the procedure, and I realized it's kinda like getting exercise -- it feels wicked good, and the more you do it, the more you want to do it. Which for this particular moment in our lives works in our favor.

But then it hit me: The reason I am so much more into the idea of reconvening the procedure these days is that now it actually has a purpose -- it's not just for fun and games and getting all snuggly with the husband. So somehow, in my warped little worker-bee brain, that puts it higher on the priority list.

This is a perennial battle I fight with myself: Work gets done first. In fact, many times, I do more work than actually needs to get done. And then there's cleaning or projects around the house or brushing the knots out of the dog's tail (the perils of shih tzu ownership). Somewhere near the bottom of the list is "lay on couch doing nothing." Or "read a book just for fun." Or "reconvene the procedure."

This is somewhat appalling. Nonetheless, I mentioned it to D. last night. (For some reason, this topic has left me unable to type his full name.) He laughed knowingly and said that it's par for the course for me. I think he was actually somewhat flattered that reconvening the procedure is enjoyable enough that I put it at the bottom of the "delayed gratification" list.

So I am trying to figure out how to snap my stupid brain out of this ridiculous mindset where external stuff comes first and my own needs/wants/desires are a verrrry distant second. Cuz if reconvening the procedure has the desired effect, we will soon be faced with an atmosphere distinctly inhospitable to re-reconvening it again. And that would not be good.