I've spent a lot of time missing opportunities to go out and frolic with friends in the last five months.

Partly, I blame Rapunzel, as I said once before. She recommended a new DS game to me last fall, Santa brought it to me for Christmas, and it ate my brain for the next few months. (Not the least because the buggy game file has crashed on me four times, forcing me to start over from the beginning.)

That's the sort of thing I do when life gets stressful. It used to be nothing but books--I'd go live in fictional or historical worlds when life got tough. For the last few years, the GameBoy has been right up there as one of my favorite hide-outs.

The point is that I realized, last week that it was June.

I mean, it's summer!

I have practically no memory of the past five months. It's all a sad-colored blur of work-related freak-outs and endless hours staring at a 2"x3" game screen, pretending that the biggest problem in life was keeping my cows happy.

This must cease. As the R.C. and I have been discussing for the past couple of weeks, we stepped back on the "career" ladder, taking lower-level jobs for (a lot) less money, to eliminate work stress and to help cure ourselves of workaholicism.

Gradually, I find myself sliding back into the bad old ways.
Granted, staying at the office for an extra hour a day to work on my free-lance projects (a tactic I decided on last night) isn't a sign of the apocalypse, and granted that working 4-5 hours a week to get a new business going is incredibly minimal, and granted that with the Six Month Frugality Plan still in place, evening and weekend amusements would still be limited to those things costing little or no money, but still. June!

By gosh, I decided, it's time to Get Out and enjoy summer as it arrives!

So, this weekend the R.C. and I went Out. And, yes, we Shopped. I am the proud possessor of a new beigey-champagne jacket and a complementary necklace and earring. And a shirt for weekend wear.

I'm lunching with Gidget and Vela and another former member of Team Chaos, Lina, on Wednesday. She's one of the Fortunate Few who has already found new gainful employment. I'm going to wow them with my muted but stylish ensemble.

And, as if to emphasize that Life Is For Living and that golden days and opportunities pass if we don't take advantage of them? The outdoor/walking mall we visited on Saturday we all-but plowed under by a tornado on Sunday, including massive damage to the one store we spent the most time (and money) in. (Okay, maybe not plowed under, but certainly extensively tilled.)*

It was quite a storm yesterday. About a mile from where I live, they had egg-sized hail. Fortunately we didn't quite get that. We had--not pea-sized but let's say lima-bean sized pellets. Although, they could have been larger before they landed. I was giving thanks for the carport as the hail pounded down so hard it broke on impact against the parking lot asphalt.

Yesterday I put a snap on a jacket, tightened the buttons on two shirts, hemmed a pair of pants, did a couple of loads of laundry, took out the trash, ironed, made a big pot o'soup, ran the dishwasher, did some work for Gidget, and (so embarrassing) spent at least six hours staring at a 2x3 screen, trying to make my cows happy. I'm starting to wonder if I have a problem. Maybe there's a 12-step program for recovering gameaholics?

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* That's the second time that's happened to me, that a store I was shopping at was destroyed by a tornado a few hours later. Very peculiar.