With the advent of summer and no school, I find myself (not unexpectedly) unemployed. At first, it appeared that I had nothing to do. This is incorrect. This gives me lots (and lots!) of time to do whatever I want to do. Besides applying for multiple jobs, cleaning out closets that don’t need grooming and thereby making me subsequently rescue a favorite garment from the giveaway box, I am also having to check my toothbrush to make sure I remembered to brush that day.

Its amazing how quickly ingrained routines become UN-ingrained. My routine before work is so complex and time-consuming, that I began to exercise, bathe, assemble my smoothie, and prepare my lunch as soon as I came home from work. Now, I’ve added a juicer, so when school begins again, I’ll have to add prepping veggies and making juice to my after-work routine. Taking care of my dog before doing all this, and having a cup of coffee in the morning, entailed getting up at 5 am. Doing all of this other than feeding my dog, after work, means I could actually sleep until just thirty minutes before having to leave for work in the morning. Sometimes, I haven’t slept on my hair correctly, but I just put it up on those days. Yes, there is a ‘correct’ way to sleep on your hair when you don’t want to mess with it in the morning.

Now that I have all the time on my hands that I could possibly want, I started digging out my dusty projects. I am actually very close to finally uploading a book on Kindle that I’ve been wanting to publish for almost a year. It required just a few hours of work, because I hired someone to do the formatting and uploading. I know these things are ‘supposed’ to be simple, but I’ve discovered that whenever someone tells you something is ‘simple’ it generally isn’t, and you end up feeling like an idiot, because you can’t figure out something that someone insists is so simple an idiot can do it. Would that make me not an idiot, when I can’t do it? This scenario has occurred with my car when it involved distributor caps, snow chains, and the radiator. It has occurred with software and MP3 players. It is unnecessarily frustrating.

I have also upgraded my exercise routine. I now have the ambition, due to the imminence of the London Olympics, of emulating the training routine of female Olympians. This is not only crazy, but impossible. All I’ve managed so far is two hours. This may get me into the senior Olympics some day.

What else? I am trying out recipes that I see on the cooking channel. I have decided to stop this, because I followed a butternut squash soup recipe to the tee and what I got was a pretty good soup that tasted like tomato with rice. For the sweat equity, I could have opened a can of Campbell’s. I am so over cooking.

Next stop is starting my long overdue non-profit. If I can manage to be productive this summer while sleeping in until nine or ten, and diddling around the house all day until I finally decide to go get a pedicure because I’ve had far too much time to study my feet, it will be a mackerel.