The best-laid plans...

I got up this morning with plans to celebrate finally getting the upper hand against yet another winter bug. I was going to bake bread from scratch. Or try to. I figured the worst that could happen was that I'd waste a few cups of flour and other inexpensive ingredients, some of my time, and a bit of electricity heating the oven. Besides, I'd get a bit of exercise doing that kneading, and I certainly could use some exercise after all the napping I've been doing lately.

The weather looked gloomy, wet and gray. No worries. I campaigned for an early spring by putting on a colorful skirt and bright shirt; not winter weight but it's fifty-some degrees outside, nearly seventy inside, and I'd be in a room with an oven on part of the day anyway. An apron would protect my clothes while I worked in the kitchen, I figured. I had to dig out sensible shoes that didn't look too clunky with the skirt, but all in all I was pleased with the effect. Cheered me right up.

I still had work to do, of course (I work at home, thanks to the wonders of the computer age), but I figured I could sneak work in - and run all the errands that needed to be done before the weekend - while the bread was rising. And then tonight, with the smell of bread in the air, I could sit down to do a little blogging, maybe. That would be fun, I thought. I've been spending my spare time sleeping, or reading, or watching DVDs, waiting for my head to unfog from the latest virus.

All in all, it seemed like a nice day I had ahead of me.

And then I took a quick run into the online bookstore's warehouse.

At the bottom of a stack of letter-legal boxes full of books was a box that was wet on the bottom and starting to crumple. And then I saw another. And another. And so on. My livelihood. Getting water damage. And only me to move boxes. And repackage them. And catalog the damage. Yikes.

Did I mention I've been sick? Or that I dressed up a tad this morning? Or that I'm less than five feet tall? Or that these stacks run from four to six boxes high?

I started to count how many boxes I needed to move, but gave it up as a bad business. Sometimes it's better to ignore the magnitude of a task and just do one thing at a time until you're done. This seemed like one of those times.

I've been pacing myself, doing a bit of work and then resting while I work out a game plan. My back's holding up better than I thought it might and I've tackled about half the job already. I'm feeling a bit relieved, too, because I expected to have to throw away more books than I have. I'm not happy about the losses, but it looked at first glance to be much, much worse than this. (Thank goodness for multi-layered boxes. The boxes are a total loss, but they have protected the contents.)

I did intend to get some exercise today, but not quite this much, thanks.

I gave up on the bread making.

Maybe tomorrow?

Probably not. I expect my back to be talking to me tomorrow.

Tomorrow, by the way, is the second anniversary for this blog. Two years already? Can't be. Surely?

Well, I hate to say so, but it's back to the warehouse for a bit more manual work. Wish me luck.

(And yes, I'm still in the cheerful, printed, colorful skirt. It's cotton. It can take it. And it's comfortable. I might look silly, but hey, women for eons managed without trousers, right?)

Update: I am one tired puppy, with sore muscles and joints (hooray for aspirin, hooray for a recliner with a footrest), but the casualties are in the dumpster, the surviving books are in fresh, dry boxes and out of danger, the problem that caused the crisis is fixed (yay husband, yay home supply store), and the fan is going to dry out the floor. Tomorrow I get to put boxes back where they belong. Whew. I really, really could have done without this mess. But mostly I'm relieved it wasn't worse.