Not much time left to procrastinate

Ten items or less

* If you just can't wait for the next big holiday -- St. Patrick's Day -- to roll around, look no further than this week, which is Procrastination Week. Procrastination is such an integral part of our lives that it has an entire week devoted to it.

Advice about breaking out of procrastination rut abounds.

One way to stop putting things off is by breaking down the job into small tasks. In turn, this means you will have 54 things on your to-do list compared to the 13 you started out with that day.

Or you could try to do the worst task first thing in the morning. For example, if you scrub the toilet immediately after rising in the morning, the day can only go uphill from there (unless your entire job consists of scrubbing toilets).

Or if you tend to procrastinate on big jobs, you could limit yourself to 15 minutes on each project, as well as doing it first thing in the morning. This way, you will know what you'll be doing first thing in the morning for the next six months.

Of course, as Procrastination Week comes to a close, you have one last chance at redemption. Saturday is Fight Procrastination Day ... unless you put it off.

* Driving into McCook was a little like driving in a big city the other day. Pulling up to the temporary traffic lights on East Sixth and B Streets, my light turned red. True, the area is under construction, but I had to sit through two green lights before passing through the intersection.

Why was the situation not completely like being stuck in big-city traffic? I was behind two grain trailers, a semi loaded with cattle and a tractor -- all trying to make that left-hand turn onto the one-lane B Street.

* Congratulations to Sarah and Paul Hoyt of Culbertson on the birth of their third daughter on Sunday. Yes, last Sunday on Leap Day. This could go either way: buying presents only every fourth year or trying to figure out whether to celebrate the birthday on Feb. 28 or March 1.

But they were one-upped by wedding held last Sunday. Photographer Deonne Hinz of Bartley shot a wedding in North Platte, which is rare to do on a Sunday, much less on Leap Day.

This seems like an awful lot of work -- having to persuade your future spouse to marry you on Leap Day -- just to get out of anniversary gifts for four years.

* As I prepared for a train trip for my entire family, I began gathering "things-to-do" books for the ride. One travel activity book listed information about each state and I quickly flipped to Nebraska to learn something new. According to this book, Nebraska has a personality -- just like a person -- only we're a multiple-personality state. "The eastern half seems like a state (I already thought we were, but evidently the authors didn't) in the Midwest, but emptier. The western half is definitely 'western,' a cowboy country of prairie grasslands and buffalo."

They go on to say that the difference between the two halves is rainfall. Since we don't have rainfall out here, we don't farm, only ranch. I know we have been lacking on rain lately, but I'm not sure how to tell all those farmers out there that they aren't supposed to be farming.

* A recent study shows that children may be bad for a parent's figure. After following 4,500 couples for 20 years, researchers found that with each child a 7 percent increase in obesity in women and 4 percent in men. The most-likely reason: More kids equal more time away from home thus more fast food and less time for exercise.

I would think that with each child, your chance of obesity would go down since you'll be spending more and more time chasing after children. Or maybe, that's just my family. If only they would have included my family in the study; we really would have skewered the results.

-- Ronda Graff is still working off the baby fat from her last pregnancy, but is thrilled that she is well below her allotted 35 percent increase.