May I have a doctor's note, please?

Not to whine, but I feel kind of exhausted by everything at the moment. I finished a significant school milestone today, but the amount of tasks on the list that must be accomplished before the semester is over is utterly ridiculous. Ridiculous. Add to that the list of tasks that must be accomplished before I leave the country on New Year's Eve, and the list is both ridiculous and insurmountable.

Sunday we had a large-ish family gathering chez megastore, and it was lovely. It was one of those days on which I had entertained the fantasy that I would not only cook a lovely meal and the historian would magically transform the slightly farmyard conditions in which we allow ourselves to live, you know, day-to-day, into a welcoming and tidy-ish domicile--not only this, which would be a miracle on the higher end of the miracle magnitude spectrum, but also that I would (a) read the paper, (b) talk to the Scotland daughter and granddaughter, (c) run to the store and pick up some supplies for the lovely meal, and (d) get a little work done. Was I high?

Everything turned out great, and that's partly because, in the cooking, I deleted a couple of menu items. One, soup, I deleted as I was talking to Scotland daughter, who always manages to inject a note of good sense into things. Thank you, Scotland daughter! The other, a greens and herbs frittata, I deleted as I was starting to feel the panic a-risin', the time getting shorter and the guests on the porch, as it were. All to the good. I still managed to have way more food than we needed. That's partly because the farmer's market potatoes we bought for storage were about the size of footballs. Well, nerf footballs. Who can really know how much mashed potato yield there'll be from a football-sized potato? I ask you.

After this feat of hospitality, there was a significant amount of laying around that had to be done (not on the list). Today, I woke up to a very grey day. I took Betty in to get her stitches out (on the list), finished said school milestone (ditto), miraculously (there are many miracles around here about now) found some papers that my son had been looking for (yes, the loss of them was due to my general slatternly way of organizing--the miracle wasn't on the list, but I'll take it in lieu of the alternative, which was to reconstruct the papers out of thin air), took the dogs to the dog park in the dead of night where it started to sleet (okay, it was about 5:30 p.m, but very, very dark! and sleety! sleet definitely NOT on the list), and came home to a sports event that I cannot bring myself to discuss (not, not, not on the list, not ever).

There will be no discussion of Christmas trees around here until I at least finish all the items on the first list (the one that's merely ridiculous).