These past few weeks I have felt a bit scattered. Not necessarily a bad thing, this feeling, although I'll admit it's been bad for this journal. There are so many little things I think I should write about, like how I got at least four inches hacked off of my hair and not one single person has noticed, or how the new improved Nice 'n Easy Color I did is not fading as quickly as the older stuff used to and my hair is staying darker than I am used to for longer than it usually does and maybe I might have to switch to a different shade next time, like the one with 'caramel' in the name because I am such a sucker for caramel.

And there are other things I have thought about writing - like stories I get second hand from my mom about my nephews, especially the oldest one who is playing soccer in a team where they do not keep score in their games, and where sometimes the game is paused on account of worm rescue, and where sometimes the teams have to be reminded which side of the field is their goal because all the players are five. Or how Christmas is going to be in Seattle this year and I am poking at airline reservation sites and trying to get someone, anyone, to commit to times and dates for everything that has to be decided before we can actually make those stupid reservations because 'do whatever you want' really is the most unhelpful response ever. Or how there are times when I can post a question to the tech support newsgroups and get the most useful replies, and there are other times when the only reply I get is from some idiot who is so incredibly impressed by himself that he cannot even be bothered to read my question and discover that the 'answer' he has deigned to post has absolutely nothing to do with what I asked.

I wanted to write about how absurdly excited I was to finally get one of those silly viruses in the mail that everyone else in the world always gets and I never seem to. Not, mind you, that I was dumb enough to run the attachment, but still, there it was in my inbox and it was with great and malicious glee I deleted it so that it could do no harm. I wanted to write about how I had this sudden need to see Noises Off again but of course Blockbuster doesn't carry anything more than 2 months old, and we only found it in the strange little video store downtown that arranges everything by some numerical code that is undecipherable to anyone else but the person who runs the store.

But all of these things are such little, inane things, and none of them ever seems worth writing a whole entry about and my mind refuses to focus on anything more substantial than tidbits. I cannot seem to concentrate long enough to get more than bits and pieces. This is probably why I have not yet painted the claustrophobic bathroom, even though we bought the paint and even marked off one wall to get me started. I have become the queen of procrastination, it seems. If I was truly productive I would be working on my knitting so I could at least finish that sweater for my youngest nephew by Christmas (remember how I was going to knit sweaters for all *three* of my neice/nephews for Christmas this year? Ha!), and I would be motivated to paint the walls and I would be motivated to finish sewing those damn curtains (remember the curtains?) or at least hang the store-bought lace panels in the living room that we bought back in (good grief) February.

I think for now I will blame this all on the weather, since it cannot seem to make up its mind whether to still cling, kicking and screaming, to summer, or slide more gracefully into autumn. And I will blame it on the fact that suddenly every bookstore we enter had another stack of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels that I haven't read and must immediately buy and devour in order to rectify the problem (have I mentioned how completely and utterly I adore his characterization of Death?). And maybe just by writing this I will kickstart something in this cluttered brain of mine and get back on track.