The Art of Procrastination

After spending a little time with Raif and I, I am sure that most people say "Really, they are married? They have nothing in common." And they aren't far from the truth. I am the saver, Raif the spender. I am the bean counter and Raif the deal maker. I am the introvert and Raif is the extrovert. And while there is a lot that is different about us, we do have one common personality trait. We are stellar procrastinators.

Last year Raif built a really nice sandbox for the kids as part of our jungle gym in the backyard. "We should probably get a cover for the sandbox." That was in May. June: "We should probably get a sandbox cover for the sandbox. Let's use the cheap plastic leftover liner in the meantime until we get a sandbox cover." October: "We probably aren't going to use the sandbox again until next spring. We should probably look into buying that sandbox cover." January: "Hey look our cheap plastic leftover cover has a big rip in it. That is probably going to let lots of nasty things in. We really ought to get that cover, you know." Last month: "I am really worried about what is in our sandbox. We probably ought to get a cover." And low and behold we did - a year later.

Since it has been warm and the kids have been playing on the jungle gym a lot we keep getting "Mom, can we play in the sandbox?" Hell, No I think - "Oh sweetie it is too cold to play in the sand today - it is only 80 degrees outside." But finally we ran out of excuses both real and imaginery and so Raif and I put the kids down for their afternoon nap on Sunday and went to see the state of the sandbox. Considering that last week we found 2 4 1/2 foot snakes in our backyard I was a little nervous to see what was under our ripped cheap plastic cover.

We ripped the cover back to find a wonderful little colony of mice inhabiting our sandbox along with about 30 different species of spiders and other insects. The startled mice scurried for cover, a bit shocked by the sudden burst of sunlight. One unfortunate fella seemed a bit startled by it all and sort of froze in his tracks - he was soon put out of his misery by Cooper who I think was as surprised as we were that she actually killed something. So Raif and I set to work. We scooped out the top layer of sand and threw it over the fence. We destroyed various webs, nests and homes of a myriad of creatures that had taken up residence. I scrubbed and rinsed all the various sandtoys and Raif raked and cleaned the rest of the box. Luckily, last year we bought too much sand and were too lazy to take it back (see procrastination sometimes does work to your advantage). So we now have fresh clean sand to add to the sandbox. Since we had a very rainy spring and since we had lots of holes in our cover the sand was one wet mess. We have left it open to dry it out before we add our new fresh layer of sand. I went to Target today and bought a storage bin for the sandtoys so hopefully they will fare a little better this year. Raif needs to go to Home Depot and get some fasteners to tie on our new sturdy sandbox cover on and then we are good to go. Hopefully we won't be hearing "We probably need to put that sandbox cover on now that the sand is dried out." for very long.