Currently, Wax and I are the little old ladies who only drive once a week. We live in a tiny town whose downtown is only a few streets across, on a small island, and we typically drive to the supermarket to get groceries once a week, not because walking there takes more than ten minutes, but because bringing a week's worth of groceries home (without a sled and a bunch of snow, or a little red wagon that we don't have) is uncomfortable on foot. Several winters in a row we have caused problems for our poor car by not driving often enough or for long enough when it was cold.

On the other hand, we have to have the car now for when we do need to leave town (buses into Kaarina and Turku from here are a pain; the regional 24h veterinary ER is on the other side of Turku, so we definitely did drive there at like 3 am one time when Snookums had a seizure).

I used to kind of enjoy driving, and I drove frequently aged 16-21, but only automatic transmissions. waxjism had an old car when I first moved here, but it was stick shift and I couldn't drive it and she couldn't teach me. We eventually got rid of it, and I never swapped my US driver's licence for a Finnish one (you can when it it hasn't expired yet).

Wax, who has never liked driving, has been urging me to learn to drive and get a license since we moved here and got the car.

Well, apparently, because I have at one time had a driver's licence from another country it's impossible to apply online for a learning-to-drive permit like everyone else can; I have to go in person to the office in Turku. I guess I'm doing that this week.

...to learn to drive stick shift, which I did not learn as a teenager. (Automatic transmission is rare here.)

Email received from the school: "Welcome! Your place is booked and here's your password for our website! We suggest that you proceed in the following order: 1. Apply for a learning permit from the government at [This Link]; 2. Start reading the theory lessons on our site; 3. Come in and book driving lessons at your local office once you receive the permit!"

I clicked on [This Link], thinking, "How nice - I didn't have to search the government website for the link myself!"

An hour and a half later, I have six browser tabs open in three languages from two different government-related sites and am waiting for my wife to get off work so she can read them and check my comprehension, or do I really have to book an appointment to visit a government-associated office to make the application in person?

• it's good to have your application filled out in advance when you visit this office,🙂


• but you can't get it anywhere else but this office. 🤔


• They want you to make an appointment in advance when you visit this office,🙂


• even though they want you to just drop off the papers when you're there,🙂


• which they want you to have prepared in advance,🙃


• even though they won't give them to you in advance?? I'm. 🫠

I have a long-term To-Do list, and last week I got this list down to two items, one of which was oiling the sewing machine so I don't really count it, and took myself quite by surprise. You wouldn't think that would be possible, and yet I found myself unexpectedly with Only One Thing On The To-Do List.

And I said to myself "Wow, this thing won't take that long! I will probably finish it quickly and easily tomorrow!" (I still haven't finished it.)

Only then the next day I woke up with a whole long list of things I suddenly needed to do first: clean the counter, paint my nails, have a bunny photoshoot, sweep the bunny cages, ink my italic pens and photograph sample writing. I thought vaguely in there, "Maybe I won't get it done today, but soon!" Except then I finished all those things in the day and also finished reading the book I was closest to the end of. (If I'd just done the last thing on the list instead of reading, I'd've finished after all.)

And that's when it occurred to me that I've been putting off the tasks on this To-Do list not simply because they are difficult or intimidating, but to avoid finishing my To-Do list.

At the end of the To-Do list lie all the other things that I should do, but don't know how to start! (Like removing a lot of wallpaper, because I've already tried several ways that don't work that well. We probably need to build scaffolding, which isn't something we are at all qualified to build.) Even worse, items like "Find more social activities and make more friends" are down there! They're things with a sense of 'should' but with no obvious first steps or convenient handles for executive function to get hold of.

What's more, I realized that I would never even have realized this (that I was trying not to finish the To-Do list) if I hadn't hurt my shoulder and had to stop knitting.

Because all this winter I've been furiously occupying myself with knitting, knitting itself has been serving me as a bottomless To-Do list.

This To-Do list dysfunction also means that anything I don't urgently or impulsively do at once - anything which then lands on the list - is in danger of being indefinitely procrastinated, even if there's nothing inherently difficult or anxiety-causing about it (like buying another batch of ebooks, so actually the list now has two things besides oiling the sewing machine again).

Neve the wild mini phalaenopsis orchid started to bloom! From above you can kinda see the size difference compared to Georges and Ella next to her. She's got so many buds already.

Wax's philodendron Jungle Boogie or Henderson's Pride, if that is in fact the one it is (apparently hard to tell, came without a proper label, on sale after being sadly mistreated at a hardware store), has made a new leaf recently and it's making a branch. I really love the leaves which are very majestic, but I keep trying and failing to get pictures of it. It's just so large and the light is from the wrong direction where it lives.