Snow Days = Sinking into the Abyss

How is it possible that I've had very nearly a MONTH off from work and I'm still completely unprepared to go back to work tomorrow? Thanks to the Great Snowpocalypse of 2011, I did not go to school at all last week. Today we're off for MLK day. Yet somehow I have to find the strength to work four whole days in a row this week. I simply don't know how I'll manage.

When I'm pressed for time, I manage to get things crossed off my list. If I know I only have a certain amount of time to do something, I buckle down and get it done. But if I have hours of unstructured time looming before me, I somehow let entire days go by and wonder why nothing got done. Last week I could feel myself morphing into a depressed, unwashed, pajama-clad slug and was almost powerless to stop it. Thank God we went to church yesterday so I had a kind of dress rehearsal for reentry into the real world.

Here's what I managed to accomplish last week:

• tried to vacuum, only to discover that my only six-month-old Dirt Devil is broken and also, no one carries the belt type required by that model
• spent another hundred dollars at the vet for my incontinent, very expensive, free dog
• started reading two books, got to page 30, and tossed them aside
• reread two titles and successfully completed a new title without throwing it against the wall
• tried in vain to load songs onto my son's new mp3 player before cussing a lot and giving up
• bought new jeans for my teenager who suddenly outgrew all his jeans overnight
• sent the kids to mom's for two days after the stress of jeans shopping with a 13-year-old
• practiced my bass guitar for hours (and built up a really impressive callous on my index finger)
• helped paint a backdrop for the children's worship room at my church
• bought new flannel sheets because I'm tired of freezing to death when I get into bed every night
  
• took four bags of stuff to Goodwill
• had a lunch date with my smoking hot hubby
• walked the dog one mile each day
• kicked some ten-year-old butt in Wii Play (I love the shooting game!!)
• procrastinated all things work-related

So now, because of that last one, I have to get busy today. So why am I still goofing off on Facebook? Because I can, that's why.

New Year, Clean Closets

So, apparently either my cleaning streak was just due to overzealous winter break getting ready for the New Year neurosis, or those Rock Star drinks last for several days. In the last few days I continued my cleaning streak adding:

• finished cleaning out the garage, including sorting through all the beach toys and sporting equipment that my kids have outgrown
• cleaned out the craft closet, which resulted in about nine bags of trash and a big box full of more stuff (another three bags) to donate
• cleaned the boys' bathroom (which required a haz-mat suit and a full can of cleaning product)
• ripped out all the old caulk in that bathroom (which involved lots of scraping with a razor blade and completely ruining my manicure) and recaulked everything
• reorganized, alphabetized, and made new tabs for my music binder for the praise band
• saved then deleted my list of books read last year to start the list for 2011
• solved the mystery of our internet freeloader, whom I affectionately refer to as the Lawnchair Laptop Larcenist

Here's the deal with that: just as I suspected, he was a college kid who was home on break and didn't have access to the internet. He was staying with his grandparents and had no wheels, so he wandered the neighborhood until he got a wireless signal. He was trying to check his grades online. We talked to his grandmother this morning, who wanted to know if she owed us anything for his using our wireless connection. How sweet is that? Turns out, we think he was leapfrogging on someone else's connection, because ours is password-protected and Dan disabled the Guest access. Anyway, Grandma was very apologetic and kept telling Dan what a good boy her grandson is and that he teaches Sunday School in Florida and didn't mean any harm. I'll never forget looking out the window and seeing him all bundled up in his hoodie, surfing the net in front of our house.

I've also decided that it's ridiculous to start a diet when there's still Christmas candy in the house, so I'll worry about that when all the goodies are gone. Which reminds me, I have a date with some peanut butter fudge.