Sadly, I must face the fact that Christmas break is over even though I don’t feel like I really got a break at all, what with the long-ass final exam week from hell, two out-of-town trips one after another, and the repeating cold that keeps coming back in the other nostril when I think it’s gone.  In fact, the first effing week of school is over and I still am not entirely ready for school to start.

For weeks prior to the break I kept thinking that I really needed to clean house and go grocery shopping, but I kept stopping myself from doing it because either I didn’t want a bunch of new groceries to sit around for weeks while I was away or, in the case of house cleaning, because I was just plain tired and lazy.

What this means, of course, is that it’s all catching up with me this weekend, the Awesome Weekend of Domesticity.  I have successfully cleaned and restocked my kitchen, taking it from a state of cluttered mess to one of shockingly clean emptiness to a state of delicious bounty that cost me an obscene amount at Kroger.  Fucking Kroger.

Before we get to Kroger, can I just back up a second and tell you about the horrors that awaited me on the bottom shelf of my fridge when I went to clean it?  There was a dried, sticky crust of some long-forgotten spill covering the entire shelf, and in this icky foundation were stuck a number of interesting items: a completely dry and desiccated baby carrot, a ketchup packet from Chick-Fil-A (when was the last time I went there?!), three dried blueberries, a mini Reese’s cup, a few green peas, and hundreds of tiny dog and cat hairs.  Mmm, tasty.  Makes you hungry for a meal prepared out of my fridge doesn’t it?

Let me point out the most pressing issue here:  How the hell do those dog and cat hairs get into my refrigerator? I mean, I am used to the hairs getting on every single other surface in my apartment — the bathroom counter, the toilet seat, my bed, my clothes, my books — but inside my refrigerator?  That is just too much. Are they on me, and I transfer them? Are they in the air, getting sucked in when I open the door? Do I need to clean/repair/replace some filter in the refrigerator’s mechanisms? Are the pets sneaking into the fridge while I’m gone and making sandwiches? THIS DETECTIVE IS ON THE CASE.

Let’s move on then, shall we? Kroger, the most annoying place to go in all the land of New Wye, was not so bad today.  This is because of something it took me quite a while to learn.  In New Wye, a place full of churchgoers, the best time in the week to go grocery shopping is Sunday morning.  Everyone is dressed in their khaki pants and blue blazers on the other side of town, while I can party down at the grocery store, whizzing up and down the aisles with very few obstructions. So my shopping trip was mostly lovely … let’s just not mention the fact that I seem to have run out of every single expensive item in my pantry at once, which meant my grocery list had — in addition to all the usual business — a handful of $10 items that combined to send me into a state of shock and horror at the cash register. Coffee, olive oil, etc. Dear dog, that hurt my wallet.

And now it seems I have to do some laundry.  This means facing the horrors of my apartment building’s shared laundry room, a place of pain and torture and the spending of yet more coins.  I hope I have enough change to do the plies and piles of clothes that need to be done, otherwise I will have nothing to wear to class tomorrow but a bathing suit or a prom dress.