And now it's time to go to work!

I'm sitting at my new dining room table, typing this on our laptop in between bites of Raisin Bran. You'd think after 6 months of eating Raisin Bran every morning for breakfast I'd be tired of it. I would have thought that, too, but then again I never thought I'd view food as a necessary evil that takes time away from the "important" things I have to get done.

I look around and see that my normally well-organized home is anything but, and I'm so tired I don't even care. Now that's saying something. When you've been reduced to changing a load of laundry over at 2:30 a.m., you begin to prioritize what's really important.

My downstairs kitchen table chairs are upstairs, clustered around half of the new dining room table. They are here because the new dining room table chairs are still in their boxes, having just been delivered yesterday. The boxes are tipped like giant dominoes against one wall, effectively rendering a quarter of the room unusable. Which is why Zoe's high chair is in the front foyer and the china cabinet (now empty) is in the family room. The new buffet is also patiently awaiting assembly by hanging out in two boxes up against wall the china cabinet used to inhabit.

I waited ten years for a new dining room, and now that it's here I just look at the boxes and sigh, "Another task to get done..."

My beautiful new table is currently covered with this:

• calculators
• mechanical pencils
• three lovely little candles in sea glass in the center of the table, you know, for ambiance
• a crappy orange mousepad I got for free from the university bookstore that has the Geico caveman on it
• an accounting book
• several notepads
• pieces of loose paper with various numerical scribblings and notes about credits, debits, assets, expenses and the like
• bits of mail I haven't done anything with
• tickets to a March 4 Blues game from one of my vendors at work
• a new LightWedge (one of M's birthday presents)
• the plastic hangtag from a new pair of Cardinals Crocs (another of M's birthday presents)
• one of Zoe's bibs
• the instructions for putting together the new chairs
• four sample boxes of Murad's new Professional Immun0-Skin Age Inhibitor given to me by my esthetician in response to the giant stress-induced fever blister on my chin, because apparently this stuff helps your skin heal itself. Can't happen soon enough, my friend. I'm applying it with a spatula.
• a desk lamp, you know, for ambiance
• a new chair cushion for the new dining room set that had to come from California as the Chicago store had only five remaining. (The Chicago cushions are still in their box, on the floor next to the domino chair boxes)
• a Cooking Light magazine that currently serves as my mousepad (M gets the Geico caveman for his laptop, lucky him)
• various cords, including two identical Dell laptop power cables, you know, for ambiance

All in all, everything is going remarkably well. Except for the whole "the house is falling down around us" thing.

One of my most profound wishes at this point is to come home and find that my furniture has been assembled, the dirty shipping boxes removed from my house, and maybe the floors vacuumed.

Hey, a girl can dream.