Best Laid Plans

My work budget meetings are next week so today I planned to spend today preparing the back up paperwork for the presentations. I had a couple of diversions. When I slung my fat ass from bed at 7:30 am, I went to the kitchen to make coffee. There was none. In fact, there was not much in my refrigerator except for leftover take out containers and copious condiments. It looked like a food UN in the confines of my small fridge--Chinese and Japanese and Mexican and what I think was some Dominican remnants. Jesus on a bike--I needed to go get some groceries. We had nothing.

Just then the phone rang. It was the doorman. Apparently, Don Pierre the Orkin Man was coming up. Did we schedule our quarterly visit from Orkin today? I asked the doorman. It was a rhetorical question. Within minutes, Don Pierre was in my food-free kitchen spraying the seams of the cabinets and door jams to keep the evil predators known as cockroaches out. I usually give Don Pierre a bottled water or a piece of fruit or some kind of consumable treat as thanks. All I could offer him was a glass of tap water and some leftover moshu pork. He snorted in disgust.

I roused Fang and we headed off to Westchester to the Super Stop & Shop. We needed staples. As is our habit, we each take a cart and focus on two select shopping categories. Fang buys all the produce (he has the peasant's eye for good produce), the deli meat and cheese, the fresh seafood and the meats. I buy all the cleaning products, the dry goods, the frozen foods, dairy, starch, beverages and cat staples. It's a good system. Fang is very disciplined. I am not. I was without coffee in me and hungry, so I made some poor choices. When Fang was doing the self checkout (I was bagging the bounty), I heard him exclaim "Cool Whip? Why are you buying Cool Whip?" or "Do you really need a five pound block of American cheese?" At that moment, I did.

$312 later, we headed back to Manhattan and I unloaded the bounty. Our edible coffers were chock full. Now, I had to get back to work.

I usually work in our dining room. This is one space in our apartment that I consider mine, all mine. I have wireless access here and the dining room table is a generous workspace. I have most adequate light (thanks to the old chandelier that I purchased in the Bowery a few years ago). It's downright cozy.I started to delve into my work. An hour or so into the process, right on cue, my computer crashed. A blue screen popped up telling me that my work was lost. This has happened a few times in the past few weeks and let's face it, my work laptop is as old as Croesus, but I hadn't expected that my work would be entirely lost. I spent five minutes in a profanity-laced meltdown. I had a cup of tea. And then I started again.

I'm well behind schedule but I'm not daunted. In the warm confines of my woman work space, it'll get done.