If you Give a Mom Some Coffee . . .

I had an Unintended Caffeine Incident this morning.  I've been a little tired this week, so when I looked at my work goals and realized just how much I would have to get done today in order to meet them, my first thought was "caffeine."  I don't drink regular coffee regularly, partly because I don't drink coffee every day and can't cope with that squeezy headache you get when you skip your coffee and partly because caffeine makes me very chatty (among other things) and the dog/cats/birds don't approve of excess conversation.  If I were privy to important government secrets, one or two cups of the good stuff would be enough to create an international security crisis.

The benefit of all this is that when I do drink regular coffee, the caffeine kicks in immediately and will not be denied.  I have been known to clean entire kitchens (including the fridge and the dusty nooks in the backs of the drawers) on one oversized cup of Italian Roast.  Basically, I can't sit down until the effect wears off, so I try to use it both sparingly and strategically.

It turns out that I should not self-caffeinate unless I have very specific goals in mind, none of which involve sitting still and focusing.

About half way through my coffee this morning, after editing a mere paragraph-- about one quarter of a page out of the 36 pages remaining to be edited today--I decided that I would be a lot more comfortable if I had a foot rest.  Now. Only the foot rest was  upside down because I was using it (duh) to temporarily store  scrap-booking supplies.  I don't scrap-book, but I was overcome by sentiment around the time of Isabel's Bat Mitzvah.  I got over it, but the rubber stamps and bits of ribbon and fancy paper have  been sitting in the foot rest for  the last six months waiting to be dealt with.  Eventually.  Only it seemed, under the influence of the coffee, that this might be the best possible time to put the scrap book together.  Just a few minutes of work, since I was moving the foot rest anyway.


The scrap book has a cut-out in the cover for a picture and there's no point in doing this kind of a job halfway, so I dug the Bat Mitzvah pictures out of a different office floor pile, where I also found some pictures and albums that needed to be boxed up immediately for  my MIL in Florida and others that should be moved without delay to Isabel's room and more even that belonged in my room, ASAP.  And a framed picture that would go really nicely on the book case in the family room, the overwhelming barrenness of which would surely crowd all other thoughts out of my head until I fixed it.  Now. Since I was making so much important progress, I decided that it was high time to put away all the papers and leftover invitations and bits of ribbon that have been decorating my floor since the Bat Mitzvah. Clearing out all that stuff left some space in one of my "please deal with this stuff soon" crates for my recent magazines (let's combine the floor piles!!!) and revealed some additional papers that needed filing/recycling/shredding and while I was at it, how about dealing with that pile of papers on the corner of the desk? After all the gluing, cutting, filing and boxing, it looked like the floor of my office could use a little vacuuming and since the vacuum was out, the mud room should really be de-furred as well.  Without all the cat/dog fur on the floor to mask it, it became glaringly obvious that the quilt in floor-pile #3, which I pretend to be working on and which the cat really loves to nap on, was also pretty furry, so that had to be vacuumed (and then covered--sorry cat) as well, and wouldn't it be good--since the vacuum was out anyway--to suck up the dusty/crumby/nasty bits lingering at the corners of the furniture. I may also have finished the right front on the baby cardigan, although I did have the good sense not to crank out a few rows on the sleeves of the sweater that I was not supposed to start last week.  And no time like the present for a blog post, too, right?

Breathe!

Here is a picture of the baby cardigan pieces, just so you can take a break from all these words which, by the way, you should have read as fast as possible so you can have some sense of what the inside of my head sounds like right now:



Oooh.  Now that I look at that picture, I can see my desk and that reminds me that I'm supposed to be getting a lot of work done today. The other half of my coffee is stone cold by now and it was kind of bitter to begin with, so maybe a fresh cup would be a good idea.

And where is that damned foot rest?