I've been working as many extra hours as I can to help pay off my credit cards and start Christmas shopping. But all of my extra working means our apartment is a hot damn mess. Like I wore my last pair of clean underwear today and a new dress that I didn't even wash yet. Plus I can't remember the last time I mopped and we need to do the dishes. Thank God I made lasagna last night (from scratch... even the sauce!) because when I got home the last thing I felt like doing was cooking. So we had lasagna tonight. Now I'll probably make something new tomorrow and Sat and Sunday but I froze a second lasagna (because that is what makes me a kick ass housewife) and that will be dinner Mon-Thurs of next week. LOL. Not really. Maybe just Mon & Tues.

I've been thinking more and more about the future, because what else am I supposed to do while I wait for 100's of forms to print at work?! And I think I need a work from home job. I enjoy working, when it's stimulating, and I love being home. I wouldn't have to drive to an office (I hate driving), I wouldn't have to feel bad because I don't eat lunch at the office with my coworkers. I could make my own lunch, I could switch laundry between tasks or while waiting for things to print or load or waiting on hold. I could listen to music and take off my shoes. It would be lovely. Plus I am a girl who can make lists and schedules and stick to them. I always get stuff done on time and so I think it would be perfect. Except I don't know what I would do. What do people who work from home do? I mean obviously all kinds of things but how do I get a job like that?

Another thing I'd like to do is write a book on being a housewife. I know I work and now I almost work full time but I still run my house. Let's be honest here, On my husbands days off he goes on half day bike rides, plays video games and sometimes pays attention to me. On my days off I do laundry, dishes, vacuum, mop, take the dog to the park or the vet or the groomer, grocery shop, go to the bank, the post office... etc. So I may not work 40 hours a week but if you add housework to the 32 hours I work every week, I do a crap ton more than my husband thinks about doing. But I digress. I don't do anything special to keep my household of 2 and a dog running smoothly just things some people don't think of. I plan. I get out the Publix ad and see what's on sale, I see what I have and then I plan meals. I buy meat only when it's on sale and I freeze it. I never shop without a list. I don't cook complicated meals and I cook in bulk. Preparing the food to be cooked is the most time consuming part of cooking. If you cook in bulk you save time later. Make double or triple batches of your favorite meals (depending on your freezer space) and then freeze the extra, it won't take nearly as much time to double a recipe as it does to make it two separate times. Then you have a meal ready to be heated up quickly for dinner with minimal effort for a night when you are busy or just tired. Anyway I just have some handy tips. It's not even anything original it's just something I think I could give a youthful twist too and market it to young new housewives, who haven't paid attention to this advice before or who have missed it all together, especially when a growing number of new wives don't cook, clean or so anything resembling domestic.

Maybe this is all just part of my quarter life crisis. And possibly after the ill fated day in January when I enter the second half of my twenties I'll realize the sky isn't in fact crumbling all around me and I am going to be just fine. Taping forms to manila file pockets for $11/hr for the next 35 years until I retire. Shoot me!

U.H.G.

I finished Dangerous to Know by Tasha Alexander. And I was very pleased to find it was a much better read than the last book in the series. Not quite the first three but better. I am hoping that if there is a next book, and I am assuming there will be, that the characters will find their way back to London.