Crunchity, crunch, crunch

Today's word is:  Crunch

I love the word crunch.  It's one of my favorite onomatopoeias. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

It's the sound my neck makes when I twist it just so.  Caramel corn crackles and crunches loudly in my ears when I'm at the movies.  Packed snow has a very distinctive crunch when it comes in contact with my boots.

Sometimes, though, crunch has a different meaning.  It's "crunch" time.  Oh, you know, that critical time when you cannot put "it" off any longer--whatever "it" is.  And I've only got myself to blame.  I get myself into this situation every semester.  I delude myself into thinking I have all the time in the world to finish something, but what I'm really doing is procrastinating, thus leading to crunch time.

And it's not just at work with grading papers or planning lessons, but it happens at home with the kids too.  Have you ever told your kids, "We're leaving in 5 minutes!" but then you go back and begin that bathroom scrubbing project that you've been putting off?  Then all of a sudden, "CRUNCH TIME." 

"Let's go, let's go, let's go.....!" you exclaim as if you'd been waiting all along and they were procrastinating.  I guess it's a learned behavior.

Or maybe crunch time is when your son comes out wearing the ratty, old underwear that he had when he was 3, that you can't for the life of you figure out why it's still in his drawer.  Then you run off to do the laundry.

Or maybe crunch time is the 15 minutes before bedtime that you try to squeeze in piano practice.  "If only she'd focus."

For me, I think I'm craving down time so badly that I tend to repress any actual work I have to do.  Maybe if I stop thinking about it, it will go away.....

How does crunch time manifest itself in your house?