I told Ryan this morn­ing when he left that the only thing I was doing today was clean­ing the house. “Maybe,” I said, “when I’m done I’ll take myself to Clemen­tine for lunch.”

Famous last words.

It’s 2:18 as I type this and the list of today’s accom­plish­ments is pretty lean. I changed the laun­dry a few times, and of course Harry has curled up in the clean pile that I dumped on the sofa so that I could fold while watch­ing DVR-ed shows. I fixed a kitchen drawer that’s been bug­ging me—the dividers kept com­ing loose—and washed the tray we keep our cof­feemaker and grinder on. I took a shower, if we’re going to cel­e­brate the small things.

Our Christ­mas tree is still up. There’s a drawer in our dresser that I ear­marked for presents and now fear open­ing. I have a 2011 cal­en­dar still in its wrap­per sit­ting on the book­case. I made the mis­take of look­ing at our base­boards a lit­tle too closely when pick­ing up dog toys and now fear that those might need to be dusted. I have a list of posts I keep mean­ing to write and this is what I bring to the table. And a photo of Harry with some Paulette mac­arons.

Image of macarons and Harry the bichon

When there’s no good place to start, where do you begin?