It was a perfect storm: Erika left work on time and just thought she’d stop at the gas station to fill up her tank. The gas pumps were empty, but the car wash was doing a roaring trade in soaps and waxes, so Erika thought she would just be able to pop in and out and go home to her husband, puppy, laundry, and un-made dinner.

Thirty minutes later, Erika realized she was a fool. A great, big, impatient fool who wanted badly to go home but couldn’t because the old lady at the cash register, whom Erika suspects may have fouled up the gas station’s computer by trolling soap opera websites and picking up a nasty virus or two, couldn’t get the credit card reader to work and thus had to have everyone pay in cash.

While Erika stood in the line that wrapped around the perimeter of the convenience store, she thought about non-stabby things like puppies, chocolate brownies, and not jumping behind the counter to run a quick virus scan and get things back into business.

In retrospect, I suspect that the little old lady kicked the wireless router and needed nothing more than a simple power cycle but, then again, I could be wrong.

On the road again after thirty minutes of standing-in-line-reading-cheesy-fridge-magnets bliss, Erika was on the road again. Alas, her smooth sailing was not to be, because she got stuck traversing the roads with an obsessive lane-changer who insisted on switching back and forth between the lanes every few feet to no apparent avail or point.

Adding to Erika’s growing stabbyness was the notable lack of caffeine in her system, the mountain of laundry she had to face upon coming home, and the dinner that sat, uncooked, in the cold cold fridge.

By the time Erika came home, she was a veritable powder keg. All it took was some mis-placed cheese on the part of my husband and we were off to the crazy-wife races. I ranted, he endured, and then I went upstairs to brood about how life without coffee is practically not worth living, about how inept convenience store clerks cost the world entirely too much time, and how obsessive lane changers deserve nothing more than to rim their tires the next time they parallel park.

Perhaps tomorrow will dawn a bright, happy day when I am not detoxing from my caffeine addiction and the Thing That Does Not Suck will be brilliant and bring mirth and joy to all involved.

Then again, maybe the only Thing That Does Not Suck will be the post I don’t write about how much I loathe trying to quit drinking coffee. I guess the only thing left to say is stay tuned and hope that my caffeine withdrawal doesn’t land me in jail for using excessive force on hapless convenience store clerks.

I’m just going to start this post by saying that I threw the mother of all hissy fits last night. I pouted. I threw a dishtowel. I even went so far as to warn the dog that if he didn’t stop acting so very dog-ish he would swiftly find himself sleeping in his crate for the rest of the evening.

I was a nightmare.

Now, all this came to pass not because Wes said something mean, or because I crashed my car (again), or realized that IHOP is shutting its doors (It’s not, thank goodness. I don’t know what I would do if IHOP closed down, but it would probably involve a French toast binge and buckets of hot chocolate).

No, all this huss and fuss was the result of nefarious snowflakes descending rapidly from the sky the night before I was able to go back to work for the first time in two and half weeks.

We had no warning. The evening started off fine. Wes and I made creamy chicken enchiladas for dinner, we whipped up some chocolate chip cookies for dessert, we watched some of the first season of Weeds (which is hilarious, by the way) but when I looked outside and saw snow falling I was inconsolable.

How could this happen? I demanded of my husband. Of all the days during my enforced vacation, how could it start snowing heavily the night before I got to return to work? Soooo evil are the weathermen. Soooo getting back at me for my post about how they’re no longer considered scientists.

Luckily, all my histrionics were for naught because the morning dawned slushy and warm and all the snow disappeared as quickly as it appeared last night. Perhaps it sensed my keen desire for vengeance and knew that terrible things would befall it should it decide to make its home on my driveway and street again (Then again, that’s completely ridiculous because what harm can you reasonably inflict upon snow? Blow upon it to make it melt? Sprinkle it with table salt? Built crude snowmen?)

All this to say, today was my first day back at work and thank goodness for that! I worked like a radioactive tree frog and the day absolutely flew by. The sad thing is, after about two hours of working I felt tired. I felt like I’d just exercised too much and I’m pretty sure the reason why is that my brain has atrophied from lack of use. Apparently, the brain functions on a “use it or lose it” kind of policy.

Now it’s up to me to whip it back into shape. After I watch a few episodes of Weeds. And eat some more cookies. And take a nap. I’m pretty sure I’ll get to it then.

Have you ever been put on hold so long that you started pleading with the awful elevator music to just say something, anything, to let you know you weren’t alone? That was me most of this morning, trying to take care of some business.

You know business, that stuff that builds up when you’re busy and ends up leaving a scattered trail of tiny projects all over your living room when you slow down and take stock of your life. Seeing as how I’m currently warmly ensconced in my solid second week of time off, I figured I’d roll up my sleeves and start checking things off my list.

I re-did all my important filing, cleaned the dog’s outdoor kennel, filled out some forms I’d been procrastinating about, editing and added a chapter to my book, and made some phone calls. Most of said calls went perfectly fine, all save two. Both calls were to our heath insurance company and oh-my-sweet-ever-loving-peaches they took FOREVER to help me out.

Maybe everyone else in the whole world is off work right now and decided to call our health insurance company at the same time, maybe there was a surprise plague of E. Boli, whatever the reason, there was no one to hear my pleas for human contact.

All told, I spent about an hour on hold today. One hour. Now, this may not seem like a long time to you, but when you’ve gotten to (and failed) the eighth level of Tetris four times and also beaten three games of Solitaire, you come talk to me and tell me how long an hour can be.

The thing that gets me the most, though, is that when I actually did get to talk with someone, she had me off the phone in less than a minute. It was an important question, the answer to which I could not have found without her help, but still. An hour of waiting and listening to the same canned message about seniors getting their flu and pneumonia shots was a large price to pay for that tasty little morsel, wouldn’t you say?

The problem is, I have so much free time right this very second that the hour of waiting doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it should. I am literally awash in free time and rolling around in it like it’s the Fountain of Youth. That statement’s probably enough to make the over-worked among you see red, but for the time being it’s the truth.

To be honest, the first week of free time was spent in agony. Having no sense of purpose, an inflated sense of hurry-rush-I-have-too-much-to-do!, and no ability to leave the house, I gestated in my inertia and it nearly drove me mad.

Week two has been much more forgiving. I’ve devoted this week to taking on Projects. I have a long list of projects that I will seek to complete before I return to my (blessed, wonderful, completely necessary for my sanity) job next week. By the time I’m done, there will not be an uncompleted project in this whole house.

After that, I’ll return to work and life as normal. I have to admit, though, it will probably be very strange to return to work and find that I am no longer the absolute captain of my own destiny. I’m assuming my bosses will take none too kindly to a mid-afternoon knitting break or lunchtime showing of Braveheart.