Tuesday, March 8, 2011

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?

4 comments:

MomAgain@40 said...

Cruch time for us is really in the mornings! Getting out of that door, and wishing I had not snoozed for 10 more minutes...

Making It said...

I am the Queen of Crunch Time. I am always trying to do one more thing before we leave or putting things off to the very last minute. Crunch time makes me crazy, but I keep on doing it!

Making It Work Mom said...

Sorry accidently clicked too fast -I was trying to comment before I walked out the door with my daughter! Ha!

MomAgain@40 said...

I saw this on quotes by Dr Seuss and thought about this blog post:
"How did it get so late so soon?"
— Dr. Seuss
(http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/61105.Dr_Seuss)