Most good things come to an end

Eventually, Miss Marshall had procrastinated for so long that it seemed like it would be fun to go ahead and do her master's anyway. This did not happen instantly, of course, because there were Bills to Pay and Situations at Work that prevented her from getting a move on, but eventually she bit the bullet and enrolled at the university, and not the cheap and cheerful one so beloved of her youth, mind, but the flash one in the big city. This was a good thing. She got to take the intercity bus to the big city once a fortnight to meet with her supervisor, and sometimes they drank green tea; she also found a number of places that did good eggs benedict, one of which was not forty steps from her supervisor's office. She could walk into the big bookshop and buy books, and also have a not bad vegetable stack with salad at the cafe inside; she could sit in Starbucks with her iBook fending off attention from weedy Mac and weedy PC users alike, and use the grossly overpriced wireless network to check her emails; she could nip into the classy shopping district across the bridge and nose around there, which was fun, though expensive.

Naturally, every second Saturday afternoon, she had to buckle down and write her thesis; this was not too much of a problem, though it did tend to cut into alternate Saturday afternoons...

All in all, Miss Marshall enjoyed this kind of living, though it did mean that she was somewhat broke, and relatively often she would dream of returning to a life of lunch orders, jumbo nappies, and group hugs. At the time of press, Miss Marshall has managed to restrain herself.

Miss Marshall procrastinates

It's just one of those things about her. She means well, but when push comes to shove she would prefer to go elsewhere. She is, however, an expert procrastinator. Consequently, after leaving academia for a life of playdough, PECS cards and group mihi, she began to think about things she would like to do. She continued to teach at the university, thus both delaying and funding the inevitable, and increasing by the way of contrast her affection for her day job. She also took up Pilates. This was a good thing, because it got her to do a push-up once in a while, and she quite enjoyed it. It also gave her something to do with the long hours between three and bedtime (six in all, or thirty per working week, only one of which, however, was spent doing Pilates, of course).

She enjoyed this so much that when her instructor asked her to consider training to teach, she jumped at the chance. It was the work of a moment to fork over her life savings (this had, after all, been a biannual ritual for the past four years, on account of the BA[Hons] [first class]) and head on over to Sydney. Twice, in fact. One thing led to another, and before long she was teaching Pilates part-time and pouring Ensure into mickey buttons, tickling children with feathers, and playing group xylophone the rest of the time.

In this way, she was able to procrastinate almost 24/7, which was nice. If all else failed, she still had her embryonic MA proposal to put off working on. Life was jolly nearly perfect. We shall continue at a later date.