Sometimes a waste of a day is exactly what you need, after a long week of being very busy and important and running yourself ragged because that is just what you do in the service of accomplishment and industry. Yesterday was a complete and utter waste of a day, and it was nothing but frustrating and made me wish very hard for a Ctrl-Z function on life, because I would Ctrl-Z all the way back to Saturday night, where I stayed up until 3:00 in the morning watching What Not To Wear and folding clothes that could really have been folded the next day, hello good morning. That is where the trouble started, if we are going to be tracing the causes and the effects.

So I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. for no good reason, but still expected to wake up at 8:00 a.m., bright and early and ready to face the day! And complete my tasks! And continue on my quest to live and love and have a fulfilling and happy life! I was so convinced that I am a superhuman who can function on 5 hours of sleep and bounce up and greet the day with unbridled enthusiasm that I did not set my alarm. Thusly, I slept until 3:00 p.m.

That is a lot of sleep. That is entirely too much sleep. What am I saying? That is a delightful amount of sleep which normally I would approve of, but which was disastrous on a day when I had so much to do, and so little time to do it.

There was proofreading—two books in their entirety, plus ongoing chapters and various writing assignments of varying lengths and laundry begging to be done, otherwise I would be left naked and a house begging to be picked up; otherwise the clutter would rise up and tidal wave over me, leaving me broken and for dead, which means I wouldn't be able to wrap holiday presents for the single bright spot in the day, the monthly dinner party/gift exchange that very evening, but much too early in the evening because oh my god, how was I supposed to get everything done?

The logical thing, of course, was to pack up a shopping cart of clothing I had purged from my closet and toddle down the block to Crossroads Trading Company in order to sell it. Which is, as I have mentioned, actually totally logical, because I am a dumbass who miscalculated in the course of holiday (and clothes) shopping, and was about to overdraw my bank account by $14.00, once all the pending transactions posted on my account. Hooray!

So I thought—cash for clothes! I will make at least, god, 300 bucks off this giant stack of clothes. At the very least a hundred. Let's try not to get too excited. Underestimate, I thought, so that I can be pleasantly surprised!

I got out of the house by 4:00, made it to the store by quarter after, and sat and waited for an hour and a half while two hipster girls pawed through bags and bags of clothing and then handed out wads of cash. I tried to work on some of my freelance stuff, but the girl next to me on the bench kept elbowing me while she gestured wildly, screaming at her boyfriend on her cell phone. So that was awesome.

Finally, my turn. I haul up my three sacks of clothing and shoes. The girl behind the counter looks at them, and at me. "Do you know how we work here?" she said. "No!" I said. "We only take fashionable and fashion-forward clothing that's in season." "Oh," I said. "I probably have nothing for you." "We'll see," she said.

It took her about a minute and a half to reject every single article of clothing, except for two blouses, and every pair of shoes except one. "That'll be 14 dollars," she said. "Huh," I said.

Is that irony? That might be a little bit of irony. I am not really sure. But it was 5:30 p.m., and I still had to go drag everything in my cart home, find wrapping paper, wrap presents, take a shower and get ready to leave for dinner and that was the entirety of my day. Overdrawn by $14 at the bank, given $14 and a kick in the pants at the used clothing store, and nothing else at all to show for this period of daylight, except a big purple vein throbbing in my forehead and a vague sense that I am a waste of space. Thank god dinner was going to have wine.