Momma Boone

I started watching Nip/Tuck a few years ago, and it quickly became one of my favorite shows. However, I started watching in the 4th or 5th season, so I decided to play catch-up over the summer. I recently watched an episode entitled Momma Boone. In order to understand the significance of this episode in my life, I first need to give you a few random moments as a backstory.

1. I have a friend, an older woman, who was a friend of my mother's before Mom died. Actually they met in the hospital, but that's a story for a different day. Anyway, this woman and I have remained close over the years and have shared many things. One of them is our procrastination, which we have loving renamed as "our tendencies toward rebellious perfection." In other words, if we can't do it exactly the way we want it to get done, we tend to do nothing at all.

2. Before beginning graduate school, I always felt like I needed a certain amount of pressure in order to be really productive. I work well that way. But after starting grad school, there was so much to do in such a short amount of time, I felt too much pressure. WAY too much pressure. Even for me. I described it to a friend of mine as "paralyzing." There was so much to do, I didn't know where to start. It paralyzed me into inactivity.

Back to Momma Boone... In this episode, Dr. Macnamara gets called out to a house to help a woman who is extremely obese and cannot get off of her couch. She tells the Doctor that she has been on the couch for 4 years. She doesn't get up to eat or shower or change the channel or use the restroom. Subsequently, her skin has bonded to the fibers on the sofa. She has literally become attached to the furniture. In a later scene she tells Dr. Troy that she is a neat freak. She always kept an immaculate home, but slowly it got out of hand. As the chores piled up, she became more and more exhausted. She reached a point where thinking about all she had to do was so exhausting she couldn't move. She would say, "Tomorrow is another day. Get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow you can start the chores." But when tomorrow came, she was just as exhausted as she was the day before. She was paralyzed into inactivity just thinking about the amount of work she had to do.

I feel like this everyday. And almost everyday I say to myself, "It's ok that you didn't get everything (or anything) done today. Get a good rest tonight, and tomorrow you can get up early and be super productive. Think how good you'll feel!" But when tomorrow comes, all I want to do is lay in bed and watch tv.

I don't want to be Momma Boone.