Well there's something I'm good at!

I spend most days avoiding housework. That's a given. I've perfected the art. Mostly I just manage to fritter the time away doing Really Important Stuff like blogging, and reading blogs. And checking my email. A hundred times a day. Or reading other websites. Or the newspapers online - so I try to tell myself it's intellectual stimulation ... By the way, have you ever tried to explain what a Blog is to someone who has no bloody idea whatsoever.. as well as the fact that you do a blog ("But what on earth do people write about?" I was asked the other night...)

I can't think what else it is I manage to do while I am avoiding doing things I don't want to do. Apart from the internet that is. Well .. ok... I haven't read a book in a while, but I am known for getting buried in a book. "Totally and utterly buried" is my usual modus operandi if the book is any good. Talking to the family? Pffft. Naturally the housework doesn't get done then either, and I've been known to stand stirring something on the stove reading the book in the other hand. A bit far-fetched that may be.. but I do justify that with the irrefutable logic that I am being a wonderful role model for my children. Read, read, read! That's the constant imperative in every school's newsletter isn't it?

Hell, I'd also rather sit and flick through a newspaper (I read the real ones occasionally too), than vacuum, or clean bathrooms, or iron clothes, or ring and make appointments for car maintenance, or clothes hoist repairmen. Again, I cite the 'role model' defence on that one. Hey, all three of my girls are avid readers... crap at keeping their bedrooms clean, but they Rock with a capital R when it comes to reading!

Go me.

However.

I have a more sinister.. primal... avoidance issue thing happening as well. When it comes to social interaction, I have that fight/flight thing down pat. No sabre tooth tigers in my neck of the woods, but if someone crosses me.. (which isn't too hard with the thin skin I seem to have been born with)... then I tend to have one of two reactions.

Back me into a corner by harping and badgering on a point, and I will lash out verbally. That's the Fighting me. However that usually happens when I am unable to simply escape the situation. Most times, I just run. (Partly because I am lost for words, and partly because I am afraid of my potential Fight Response.) So.. cue Flight response. Like with the netball committee meeting the other night. And, remarkably, I have the endurance (or stupidity) to keep running.. and avoiding... like I am still doing right now with the perpetrator of the remark.

Meh, I am still so peeved, I am avoiding face to face/voice to voice contact. I am boycotting the twilight comp. (Because the build up to the situation was getting cheesed with the obligation thing about being there to 'help' because you are on the committee, and geez, talk about the bitching if it seems that one person always gets there earlier and has the rings and pads put up all the time.) I haven't returned her phone message from her today because she was all palsy walsy sounding, and I am so annoyed that she has no effing idea of what she said (or the fact that it came as a culmination of her erratic manner - one minute she's your mate, the next she's acting like she's pissed off with you for something.) Meantime I am still doing all the secretarial stuff - the frigging letters... the newsletter.. the website... And sending emails out (and it's not my fault her email really is stuffed and now she can't receive them...)

I am just. Avoiding. Her.

So while I haven't run away from the netball committee stuff completely.. I know that really I should move on.. But I can't. Yet. I do recognise that I am stuck in this avoidance thing that I do so well. Problem is once I've committed to it, it gets harder and harder to extricate myself. (Lately I also do the avoidance thing with ringing my mother because I'm really 'over' her 'comments' on whatever I/we do... so I am nothing if not well practised.)

It struck me this afternoon though, that I had taken my avoidance issues to new heights. I had a few things to avoid. The main thing was staying at the netball while Cait played. It had to be something good, though - whether or not they heard my 'excuse'. It had to sound good to me. Not something as mundane (and guilt inducing) as sitting here reading blogs (I'd exhausted my Favorited blogs anyway).

I had to have the Best Reason to not be at netball .. again. (Which would therefore mean I wasn't Avoiding.) And, naturally, I didn't feel like vacuuming, emptying the dishwasher, or unpacking the shopping - and that wouldn't sound important anyway.

Whatever would this 'maybe she's on the verge of a nervous breakdown because her husband works away a lot and [the netball president] wouldn't have a clue what it's like' fragile, thin-skinned Avoider do?

Mow the yard of course. That's what I'd rather do. More than housework. Or making a proper dinner (Made the kids do their own pizzas.) Or facing up to the netball situation I ran away from. Of course! I'd rather mow! And I did - till, at 7.15pm, with about a quarter of the backyard left to do the mower ran out of fuel, and I really felt that I should be getting the girls started on showers and dinner.

How's that for twisted avoidance tactics?

And now, at 12.48 am, I had better go and iron the school uniforms for tomorrow .. because I have avoided doing that little job all day too. Some things do catch you up in the end.

Labels: introspection