Just Wait 'Til tomorrow

OK. So I got married. In October.
A few years ago.

It was a beautiful ceremony, held on top of a four hundred foot high bluff overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and Whitewater rivers. You can see for about five miles up one river and nine or ten down the other, and there are usually some real, honest-to-goodness bald eagles drifting around on the air currents overhead. It’s been my favorite place on Earth (like I might have another one on some other planet) ever since I stumbled upon it one afternoon while riding motorcycles with my brother, Dale.

Anyway, the wedding went off without a hitch (pun intended), unless you count the fact that it was about 45 degrees with gale force winds (it was 85° two days before) or the small matter of me losing our marriage license during the Groom’s Dinner (I never did find it), or how our photographer’s car stalled after the ceremony leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere. And, I never really got the chance to thank my friends for burying my car with left over salad bar vegetables, mummifying it in Saran Wrap and pouring flour down the defroster vents. But those were minor details, and easily overcome (although we’re still trying to thaw out the Bride’s sister, and I continue to initiate a choking flour-blizzard whenever I try to defrost the windshield). But, that’s the kind of stuff that will turn into a really incredible story fifty years from now when we’re sitting in our rocket-powered, anti-gravitational wheelchairs on the nursing home heli-pad.

In case you’re interested, we honeymooned in Cancun & Cozumel (which, true to our wedding’s natural disaster theme were wiped out by the direct hit of a hurricane five days before). They pretty much had it patched up by the time we got there, and on the plus side, we were the only tourists in the entire Yucatan peninsula, so getting a table in the restaurants was a snap (although thirty-four tip-starved waiters desperately circling your table like vultures does get annoying after a while). We snorkeled, dutifully learned the key Spanish phrases (Señor! ¿Donde esta el Banyo?: Mister -Quick! You gotta tell me! Where is the bathroom?!) and endured a six hour local bus ride back to town from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, during which I was surrounded and nearly taken prisoner by a marauding band of six year-old children, equipped with some kind of peso-sensing technology and hell-bent on relieving me of all currency.

So, all-in-all it was a lovely vacation, but like I said, that was last year and I still haven’t written
my thank you notes and people are beginning to call the coroner to see if I’m still alive.

I am. It’s just that I was bound by IBSP (International Brotherhood of Scofflaws and Procrastinators) bylaws to wait until now to start putting pen to paper. I did have a good reason to postpone the inevitable at first. We lost the list (no, really, we did, I swear it) of who gave us what, but having an actual reason to delay writing runs counter to what professional level procrastination is all about, and I wanted to stay pure. And, to tell you the truth, I was kind of consumed with training for the Olympics.

Oh, sure. Although it doesn’t get as much press as the more glamorous sports like gymnastics or boxing, there is an Olympic procrastination team. Or at least there was supposed to be. Apparently, the people who were in charge of submitting the documentation for thirty-seven countries all missed the filing deadline. Go figure.

But, that’s OK. As we’re fond of saying, “There’s always next time.” Besides, I’m still waiting for my 1992 uniform to show up, and you can’t compete naked, even though that’s the way the ancient Greek procrastinators used to do it.

I guess this is all pretty hard to understand if you’re not living the life. The hard work, the sacrifice. The constant fear of accidentally doing something when you’re supposed to do it. One year, I almost renewed my car’s license tabs on time and the stress nearly got me. I had to put off a dozen dentist’s appointments just to get back to normal.

I hope you’ll forgive me. I meant to get those thank you’s out, I really did. It’s just that stuff came up, and you know how it goes. But, they’re all written now, and wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “Better late than never?” Or how about that great Carly Simon song about how waiting makes everything so much better. Anticipation I think it was. Wasn’t that a great message?

So, thanks for waiting, and thanks to my lovely wife, Agnes, who would gently remind me,
“Joe, If you don’t get your thank you’s out sometime this century or I’m going tie your ears behind your back!!!”

Ha, ha. What a great kid. I’ve really got to tell her just how much I love her, and how she’s made my life better in a thousand different ways. And how much she means to me. Because you never know if you’re going to be here to see the next sunrise. Carpe Diem. Seize the day!

You bet!  Me and Nike, we’re just gonna do it!

Well... maybe tomorrow.