Avoidance Principle

Oh, I know how to avoid doing something.

I had several goals for this weekend:
1. Email photos of a condo we rent to interested people.
2. Get some photographs ready for an NC Wildlife competition.
3. Look over material for a possible study on spiritual gifts for church.
4. Finish revising a story and submit it to a literary competition.

Saturday morning I had six people coming to breakfast as part of an interview with a potential associate minister at my church. That consumed Friday night and Saturday until about noon. Since I knew most of Sunday would be taken up with church and the to-do list, I justified reading the very fine book, The House on Fortune Street, for most of the afternoon. Saturday night we met the minister and prospect at the Art Museum for a concert.

Sunday morning I went to the 9:00 service, had brunch with two friends, went back to church to count the collection. I finished around 1:30, headed home and changed into comfortable clothes, looked over the list of four things to do. Here is what I did:

1. Planned lunches and dinners for the next few days, shopped and cooked. This took a good two and a half, three hours.
2. Did five loads of laundry.
3. Called my dad, one sister, my brother, all three daughters, my sister-in-law, and my mother-in-law. Each conversation took ten to fifteen minutes except for two of the daughters who were not at home (or not answering).
4. Went from laptop to desktop trying to figure out which pictures to submit. Dug around in about ten drawers looking for a storage device to put them on so I could have them in one place.
5. Went online and read all my friends' blogs, my weekly horoscopes, Post Secret, and email. Gathered email addresses of people interested in the condo so I could send pictures.
6. Searched high and low for my husband's camera which had the condo photos on it. Finally found it underneath some clothes and papers I had made him move to the bedroom because people were coming over for brunch. Downloaded them to computer. The disk included photos of his recent fly fishing trip to Mexico, so I looked at the pictures to see if there were any of topless women on beaches. There weren't, but there were some fabulous photos of children and fish.
7. Thinking about his recent vacation, I remembered that my sister-in-law and I had talked about going to Westglow Spa for a few days. Spent a good thirty minutes looking on the Internet for a place to stay.
8. Searched high and low for the hard copy of the story I was revising. I finally found it in the car, where I had left it after meeting with my writing coach, thinking it would be out of the way for the, you guessed it, brunch.
9. Realized that all that surfing was using up my computer battery and went to the bedroom to get the power cord.
10. In my bedroom, I glanced at the clock and realized that it was ten o'clock. Saw the freshly made bed with The House on Fortune Street next to my pillow. Yawned. Went into the bathroom, took my contacts out, took a shower, got in bed. Read until I fell asleep with the book open on my stomach. Woke up this morning, list still on the kitchen table.

Oh well, it's Monday. I have a whole week to get it all done now that I've done all my chores.