Plan of the Day and how the Pioneer Woman saved me $9,000

Every morning when I get to work for the Navy there is P.O.D. - Plan of the Day. Today, I have my own P.O.D. - 1. Clean a room. 2. Play on Blogger. Back to Step 1. Insert one soccer game in the middle of all of it, end with a Girl's Night Out to celebrate assorted birthdays (not mine), and the P.O.D. is complete. Hopefully I 'll get to a few of the many, many posts hanging out in draft status wondering if they will ever see the techno-light glow of the Internet.

Why is the cleaning so all-consuming? Well, it all happened in January when the IRS came knocking and wanted an extra $9,000 from 2006. That was a check we couldn't write - just don't have $9,000 laying around. So we went on "The Budget" and one of the things to go was my weekly housekeeper. So cleaning became my leisure activity. I cleaned constantly trying to get that good feeling when the whole house is clean all at the same time - the feeling I used to get every Tuesday afternoon when I would come home from work and find that the housekeeper had come and all was well. It was my suburban version of crack - I desperately wanted that feeling again and if I got it for a minute, I wanted it again immediately.

What does the Pioneer Woman have to do with this? She had a contest on her blog for some Kitchen-Aid mixers. She runs these contests pretty regularly, there may even be one right now! (Sorry, no, just went and checked.) The question she posed to answer for an entry was "If you could have one wish, what would it be?" I flippantly answered, "I'd want my tax bill to disappear." Within a day or two, I got a letter from the IRS, we had submitted a revised 2006 return, they accepted it, not only was our $9,000 bill gone, we would shortly be receiving a check for a $62.00 refund. Hooray! It was magical.

So on Tuesday, my housekeeper returns! But only twice a month because we are still on a revised form of "The Budget" in anticipation of Bookworm heading off to college in the Fall and having to pay that bill. Sigh.

Off to clean a room...