When you’re a professional writer, you need a lot of procrastination tools. I’ve talked with other writers and we all agree that before writing, you really need a bit of downtime. You need to deflate a bit. I have the normal blogs I hit and I hit them in a sort of specific order, but I know that when I’ve reached TMZ, I’ve hit the limit and it’s time to write.

There’s one site, though, that I try to keep away from because I can sink a lot of time into looking for things I don’t need and cringing at the misspellings I’ll never be able to fix: The Big Craig. Fortunately, when we moved up here, we needed to furnish our house and so I got to spend a lot of time on Craigslist. Better, we moved as IKEA opened and for whatever reason, Portlanders were thinking, in droves, ‘hey, this antique crap that I have would be so much better sold for nothing so I can use a wee screwdriver to put together some particle board and have it wobbling around my house for the next ten months.’ No offense to IKEA, I did buy some drapes there, and thank you to you all who got rid of your nice furniture for pennies. It looks swell in my house.

I was cruising around Craiglist today looking for writing gigs when I decided to check out the gardening section. I don’t know why. I guess I just hoped I could spend more money to kill plants. Well, remember how I was seeing farm animals all over the place? Now I know where they came from. In just Portland, you can buy “roosters .2 for sale crested silver polish – $10” or “Nubian doe in milk and pregnant – $250” or (no kidding!) “UTTERLY Cute Cow Slippers….New – $6“. Forget about the bounty in Sandy (PIGS ready for the market), or Boring (Boer Goats — which I read as Beer Goats) or Beavercreek (Arabian Gelding – $700)!

I also hit up the furniture section hoping to spy a cooch or two. Instead, I found some Twin Matters and a “GRANDFATHER MUST SELL ASAP – $1500” I think that’s a little pricey for a grandfather. I’d probably wait ’til they drop the price.

That’s it for me. I’m off to write. And though I’m now considering the “COOLEST CHAIR EVER” — I’m a sucker for hyperbole — I still need to drum up some writing gigs and Craigslist, though always informative, “R U illiterate 2? – 43“, didn’t hook me up today. Thank god for tomorrow.