Aaaaaaaaah…

Amazing what a difference a few hours of intense labor can make, eh?

It was hard to motivate myself to do it. What I wanted to do was lie on my sofa with my knitting whimpering to myself about how hard it is to get back in the groove after two years – TWO YEARS! – of SAHM-ness. Maybe drink of few classes of the darned tasty deLorimier Sauvignon Blanc to help me relax a little bit, maybe a few bites of Godiva Chocolate, which can be conveniently purchased just above the Powell Street BART station, which conveniently sells the high value BART tickets - $64 ticket for $60, a 6% discount WOW!!!!!!!

But I said to myself, said I, “Self! You know better! If you don’t get it on here, you will be whining and pissy all week because you won’t have anything to wear or eat, and you’ll be trying to do it all in the wee hours of the night when you know full damned well you have to get up early in the morning and then what? You’ll come down with pneumonia or something and end up in the hospital on life support with some bizarre ‘mystery’ upper respiratory complaint no doctor on earth can diagnose while family and friends come by in an endless stream trying to bring you support and cheer until you want to just crawl under the bed and die in peace, when finally your long lost love Gwalchmai appears, conveniently having just graduated from a fifteen year course in upper-respiratory diseases and their cures to whisk you off to a warm tropical climate to take the Mango-Rum cure – for which you have neither time nor inclination and besides, you’re not all that fond of mangos and never did learn how to pronounce ‘Gwalchmai’.”

Yes, it would have been quite the travesty. So instead, I got my lazy butt off the couch and got busy.

I did eight loads of laundry, and for bonus points put them and the six loads that were piled up on my dresser from the here-and-there loads the husband ran during the week away, cleaned my bathroom, did more ironing than really should ever be necessary, went to Costco, filled up the van with gas, cleaned the kitchen twice, took out the garbage and made a menu for the week’s meal – I even took the appropriate meat out of the freezer so I won’t be running around fifteen minutes before I wanted to be cooking shrieking, “No chicken! No chicken! How am I supposed to roast a frozen effin’ chicken?!” (The answer, of course, is 1-800-SEND-PIZZA.) I cleaned the office, paid the bills, adjusted the budget and made appropriate transfers for the month of February.

Also, I handwashed six wool sweaters and may I just say that it is irritating that we wear them when the weather is cold and damp. So I handwash the wool and lay them flat to dry, which takes approximately six months in this kind of weather. It would take them maybe two hours in the summer, but ooooooh no. This is winter. It is rainy and cold, and damp wool just sits there for days and days making the whole house smell like a wet sheep. Oh well. The price we pay for the wonder that is wool sweaters.

I set up my remote access and confirmed that I can access all the necessary database servers from the delightful little cave I call my home office. I can get my work email. I can, in short, do all the things I will need to be able to do once I start telecommuting two or three days a week…which is the only reason I took this job downtown instead of holding out for something closer. While I’m fairly hardened to the commute by now, still. There never really has been any reason I can’t be antisocial from the comfort of my own Den instead of traveling all that way to be so in person.

And then, when all the Denizens were in bed, I got into the bathtub with a Basin bath bomb I bought in Downtown Disney last week, lit the lavender candles (also purchased from Downtown Disney – the hotel gave me a $150 gift card, woo hoo!) (the kids got awesome presents from Disneyland!!!), and buried my nose in my book.

Today, I have a gentle little list involving multiple stops near multiple coffee shops, at which I fully intend to throw money in a kind of orgy of self-indulgence. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! The Queen of Cheap is probably going to go through about ten bucks on hot milk and espresso.

Because it’s good to be the Queen…when she’s organized.