what happens when you leave me home alone all day

Lately, work has been s-l-o-w.  So slow.  Incredibly slow and boring.  So today, when there was about 1/2" of ice encasing everything in Westchester, including my house, my car, and the road, I stayed home.  And barely had to work at all.  I still woke up at my usual time and couldn't get back to sleep.  Kathy isn't here (she's still in London) so I had the entire day stretching out in front of me, with nothing to do.  So I decided to take advantage of this rare luxury, and started doing chores like nobody's business.  You see, with Kathy out of town, and the house to myself, things had sort of... slipped.  You'll see what I mean.

First, I cleaned the kitchen.  This is what it looked like before:

And this is what it looks like now:

In case you're failing to appreciate what I was working with, this is a different view before:

And this is what it looks like now:

Kind of gross, right?  Don't worry, there's more.  As you know, we've been working from home a lot.  When we work from home, we tend to just, well, work.  And not so much pay attention to our surroundings or what is happening to them.  Which is how this happened:

That was our "reading table."  With no room to actually read any thing at all, frankly.  But now it looks like this:

Doesn't that look like a nice, cozy little place to review a document?  So then we turn to Kathy's desk.  I only call it "Kathy's desk" because it's origin can be traced back to Kathy's checkbook.  Likewise, "Erin's desk" can be traced back to my checkbook.  In reality, whoever needs the desktop computer uses Kathy's desk, and whoever doesn't uses Erin's desk.  So for the record, no one person is responsible for the horror to follow.  And with that, I give you Kathy's desk (and also the floor, WTF):

And Kathy's desk now:

And Erin's desk then:

(I don't know why this picture is so small.  Maybe blogger

had to shrink it down to fit all the mess on one blog.)

And Erin's desk now:

(anyone notice our color scheme for the office?
If you noticed before I said, you get a gold star)

Tranquil, isn't it?  Yes. I think so too.  But was this enough for me?  No, of course not.  I was trapped inside an enormous house, alone, for an entire day.  The first plow went down our road at about 3:30 in the afternoon, by which time the entire front yard had accumulated so much ice that my car looked like a popsicle.  When I was doing the kitchen, I decided to empty the compost from under the sink.  I went outside, and looked over the deck railing at our compost bin below.  Typically, I just dump it over the edge and it lands in the bin.  When there is snow, it drops through the snow into the bin.  Today, however, the rotten tomatoes, banana peels, and old coffee grounds were no match for the layer of ice on top of the snow in the bin.  They ricocheted off and went sliding across the backyard.  I think there might actually be a tomato in the neighbor's yard.  I nominate Kathy to go retrieve it.

Anyway.  No, all this cleaning was not enough for me.  I also cooked.  For lunch, I made lentil soup (from the Moosewood cookbook, but modified.  I am too lazy to peel tomatoes so I use canned peeled tomatoes, I double the vegetables, and I add freshly-grated Parmesan to the top.  Yum.)

And then I made banana bread out of some old bananas I came across while cleaning the kitchen.  I've never been much of a baker, since I don't really have a sweet tooth, so baked goods don't appeal to me much.  But it occurred to me that I now have four guinea pigs other family members to eat the food I bake.  And so, since we're doing before-and-after shots, here it is before:

And almost after:

And after:

I know, a banana bundt?  But somehow, in the divorce, I lost my bread pans.  It seems Kathy did too.  Sigh.  So it was either a bundt or a 9x13, which just would have been weird.  In case you're interested, I made the banana bread out of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (which is a jackpot if you're only going to buy one cookbook ever, in life).  Only I substituted chocolate chips everywhere the recipe calls for nuts.  Hey, I'm just thinking of the kids here.

And that, my friends, is what happens when you leave a Type-A home alone all day.  Good thing Kathy comes back tomorrow night.  What if there was another snow day and nothing to clean or bake?  At about 8 tonight, I finally schlepped across the street to the neighbor's house, because I was kind of making myself nuts by not seeing another living human all day.