I jinxed myself. I should know better.

In my last post, I wrote:

It's the end of August.

Congress is out of session.

My phone isn't ringing.

My email is (mostly) quiet.

This is the last chance for some downtime before the holidays, so I'm going to take full advantage of it.

See you after Labor Day...

If I may, I'd like to edit/amend the above:

It's the end of August. [True.  It was the end of August.]

Congress is out of session. [This is/was also true.]

My phone isn't ringing. [See?  This is where I went wrong.  I never should have typed this.]

My email is (mostly) quiet. [Never should have written this either. I AM SUCH A MORON.]

This is the last chance for some downtime before the holidays, so I'm going to take full advantage of it. [AAAAAAAAHAAHAHHAHAHAAHAHA!!]

See you after Labor Day... [Uh, yeah. Labor Day 2011.]

That post went up at 6:05 p.m., August 21.

I spent all day Sunday, August 22 canning and preserving food for this article in The Washington Post.  I also mowed and pulled weeds in the garden to fend off a location scout for The New Sanford & Son.  That evening, I relaxed on the front porch with a glass of wine and some leftovers from my birthday dinner a few nights before, thinking to myself these next two weeks are gonna be AWESOME.

And the next day, August 23, all hell broke loose for two of my clients and I've been working 18-hour days ever since.  That's not an exaggeration.  Quite literally, I wake up at 7 and start work and do not finish work until I go to bed around midnight or 1 a.m.  I sometimes put listen-only conference calls on mute and speakerphone while I am in the shower.  The phone does not stop ringing (there are reporters around the world interested in one of the issues I'm working on now and the concept of time zones doesn't always work when you're on deadline), the email does not stop coming in, and things are changing and developing minute-by-minute such that I have had to leave the grocery store three separate times, empty-handed, to handle a work crisis... never mind the dinners with friends and lunches with other clients I've had to cancel. [Not to mention the fact that it's taken me eight days to get this post up on the site.]  Deep breath...

I know.  Poor, poor me.  First-world problems and all.

This is all to say that, factoring in some travel and a two-week work project in California, I have not cooked since July 20 -- not for myself, and not for anyone else.  AND IT'S DRIVING ME BONKERS.

I don't have any food in the house -- it would only spoil.

I have eaten approximately 6,498,127 gluten-free Larabars.

I have gone through 4 boxes of Rice Chex.

The guys at my local Indian restaurant see my number on caller ID and answer the phone saying, "Hello Carol, we will see you in 15 minutes."

So you can imagine how the lack of any sort of balanced diet is contributing to my already sky-high stress levels.  I'm a real joy to be around.

I open the Alinea cookbook nearly every other day, and just as I start to make a shopping list and figure out a timeline for making one of the recipes, the phone rings or my email explodes with another judicial action, federal appeal, Congressional statement, or reporter looking for some background. 

I love my job, and I am incredibly passionate about the issues I work on.

But I need to chop something.  Badly.