I came home today and for some reason I was just in a grumpy sort of mood. I suspect it’s likely due to just being tired, and it being cold and wet outside, but it did not help that we finally got broke down and assembled the ugly monstrosity of a bookshelf downstairs and it reminded me how much I don’t like that thing, and how much I had hoped that we could have had something else built, or bought, in its place by this time. When we got this thing, years ago, it was only ever supposed to be a temporary solution, except that once it was up, we never got around to replacing it, and my fear has been that if we had to put it up here, sheer inertia will prevent us from ever getting around to replacing it in this house too. And it just fed into my continuing frustration about my inability to make even the most basic of design decisions about my own house because if we could have just made a decision about the damn stain and wood, this would have all been a moot point anyway, and, well, it just kind of snowballed from there. All because of one big ugly stupid bookshelf. And I realize it is a silly thing to be gloomy about, but logic rarely comes into play when one is in the midst of a grump, self-doubting sort of funk.

After we hauled just a few boxes downstairs, and then Richard left to go to a writers group meeting, I decided that unpacking the books was only going to make me grumpier. So instead I got some dinner, because I was also extremely hungry (and I am sure that had *nothing* to do with my grouchiness at all – ha), and then I baked cookies. Because it is very hard to maintain a stupid grumpy mood when the house smells like cookies. And it is even harder to maintain a stupid grumpy mood when you then *eat* some of those cookies.

By the time Richard got home I was feeling much better. We moved a dozen or so more boxes of books downstairs, and I looked at that big ugly bookshelf against the wall that is painted just the exact shade of red we had been hoping to get (think old library, or old study – it’s that sort of red) and I knew that I could live with it and all of its accompanying mental baggage, even if it’s there for a lot longer than the word ‘temporary’ might suggest. Cookies made. Cookies consumed. Crisis of confidence averted. Let the holiday merriment begin.

Happy Holidailies!