As of 5 pm this evening, I have been officially unemployed for two whole days (although technically if you count the weekend, it's really four). Initially I was supposed to start the new job yesterday, but considering that the person I'm to work with had vacation planned, we all thought it might be best if I waited til Wednesday when she was back.

This means, in other words, that along with my two weeks of paid freedom (from when I gave the Big Fish my notice and than ran screaming from the project to which I'd been assigned), I got to tack on a few more days of sloth. Whee!

So what, you may be asking, did I do with this, my last day of freedom?

I cleaned, that's what! And not the boring ordinary sort of cleaning - oh, no. The smudges on the bathroom mirrors get to wait for another day. No, today I decided to tackle a whole list of all those obscure little chores that have been on my 'someday when I have nothing else to do and I'm so bored I could either do these or watch my navel collect fuzz'.

I started the day by diving into the linen closet which was once (the day after I unpacked the towels) a picture of perfect neatness, until Zuchinni, Rosemary, and Allegra got involved. Luckily Allegra has since adopted several miscellaneous boxes as her nap spots of choice, Rosemary would now rather burrow under any blanket then waste her time in messy piles of towels, and Zuchinni has made enough progress in this whole socialization process that he no longer feels compelled to cower, shivering in terror, amid the sheets and towels.

Flushed with the excitement of producing shelves of neatly folded linens from cat hair-infested chaos, I whirled through the downstairs putting things away. When I hit the kitchen I even managed to clear off nearly an entire counter of miscellaneous stuff that's been accumulating there for months, not the least of which was the box of things I brought home from my office when I cleared the heck out of there. I then prepared to tackle the guest room, and the stack of remaining wedding presents we still haven't figured out permanent homes for, but my enthusiasm was waning, and it was then that I remembered that, alas, my last evening as a lazy bum was to be spent not lounging in front of the computer playing one last rousing game of Civilization II (the only computer game I've ever gotten addicted to), but instead slumped in an uncomfortable chair at a monthly board meeting for the SPCA. This meant that since I wasn't out of town or scrambling around planning a wedding, and since my notebook had actually been returned to me (finally!), I no longer had any excuse for why I don't have the minutes done. So the last few hours have been spent frantically typing several months worth of extremely important SPCA business (ha!) into amazingly well-organized and lovely documents worthy of…well, worthy of stashing somewhere and never reading, I'm sure, but leave me my delusions of grandeur, would you?

While taking a break in typing I dutifully called the company-to-be-nicknamed-later and verified that yes, I really do still have the new job, and yes, they are expecting to see me tomorrow. This is wonderful news, considering that four days of unemployment (voluntary or otherwise) is really all I am willing to experience right now.