Fig 1: What I'd rather be doing.
I'm ill. Therefore, my wife has enacted a very stern "no puttering" rule. She says I'm the worst patient. I won't stay in bed and get well. I prefer instead to putter, which includes (but is not limited to): futzing with the oscillator on the fershlugginer unit, purchase a portzebie brand kluge and never using it, and pecking at shiny things.
However, I am allowed to do non-strenuous things, like catch up on my reading pile (which is now taller than Billy Barty) and write this blog (as long as I don't type hard enough to raise a sweat). Oh, and continue my memoir project.
Billy Barty (R - shown actual size) and Jack Wild (L - shown tripping balls) on the set of HR Pufenstuf.
Puttering is the most active form of sloth. My dad used to do it all the time. But then again, my dad had asthma and was hitting the bronchodilator pipe pretty hard most days. That inhaler stuff can give you the strength of ten men and the attention span of a sugar glider (or so I've heard), so it's no wonder he was out in the garage nailing things to other things most days and that his desk looked like a vertical landfill.
I say "sloth" because essentially you're replacing something you should be doing with something that is utterly non-productive, say, replacing working on a memoir project with teaching the cat to speak Spanish. So if you think of a meth freak as a very-speeded-up tree sloth, or view catatonia as a tremor at extremely high frequency (see "Awakenings", Dr. Oliver Sacks), then you get my drift.
So, odd as it may seem, Teresa's "no puttering" rule has made it so that I can only do things that are non-strenuous (reading, writing but not too hard), and will undoubtedly lead to me being super-productive on the memoir thing. However, the cat will just have to remain a monoglot. For now. Until I kick this thing.
Much love, -G