Sitting and general procrastination

So sitting, it’s not really anything you appreciate until you can’t. I really realised how great it can be to just sit and, well, nothing this summer. My general aim seems to be “become one with the sofa”. I think this is mainly because where I work you don’t get to sit down. The only things resembling chairs in the shop are those weird benches people use to try on shoes. Not that I don’t love working, but running up and down stairs to fetch shoes for the lovely pikeys of Douglas can be tiring. Especially when you work 5 hours with only a 15 minute break.

So needless to say once I get home all good intentions of doing something productive go out the window. I just sit. The best sitting often happens when procrastinating I find. I think the knowledge that one has to get up and do something makes sinking into the soft leather all the more inviting. Take yesterday for example I got asked to wash up the dishes after dinner. Not a very difficult task but as usual I procrastinated. So I made a cup of tea and sat down.

Our chairs are massive leather recliners. I don’t tend to go all the way into full lounge position the way my dad does when we have guests over, in a way that makes me die a little inside, I just put up the footrest. Doing this makes you sink back even further back into its leathery arms of comfyness but not so much that you’ll spill tea on your face when you try to drink it. Once the footrest goes up though, there’s just no escape. All the aches of the day go away. I find my feet don’t feel like they’re going to explode anymore and I tend to get sleepy, really sleepy. I usually zone out and become a vegetable. A drooling zombie unable to respond to simple questions like, “how was your day?” or “what’s your name?”

When this happens I also forget whatever it was I sat down to avoid, and it’s usually only when I realise I have to pee that I stand any chance of escaping. That’s what happened yesterday. After 3 hours of solid sitting, nature called, and try as I might to avoid having to go upstairs and sort things out, the documentary on waterfalls pretty much sealed the deal. It was then I remembered the washing up. Let me just say leaving things to congeal on the stove for three hours is not a great idea, it took me nearly as long to coax the crud off the bottom of the pans, but that’s the beauty of sitting. The knowledge that you have to get up and do something mundane and annoying in a minute makes the fact that you’re not doing it now and that the chair is really comfy, even better. You put off getting up for just five minutes more and you seem to be even more aware of just how spongy the armrests are, and if you could put your head down and rest it for just a second everything would be perfect...