They say never to go grocery shopping when you're hungry, but I'd like to amend that axiom with an addendum. Let's call it Addendum A:

Never go grocery shopping when you've had four hours sleep or less and your resistance is so low that you end up coming home with a trunkful of items you don't need and shouldn't have, such as chili cheese Fritos and Lay's Salt and Vinegar potato chips, not to mention Rice Krispies bars and Freschetta four-cheese pizza, which you only bought because it was on sale for all of fourteen cents off the regular price.

Before I went to the grocery store, I stopped by Mom's to try to help her with some software problems she's been having. I managed to do absolutely nothing to make her computer run any better, so I moved on from software to hardware. Guess what? Not only is the paper still stuck in the depths of her printer, but I also found a way to take out a couple of screws and lose one of them down inside. Why, oh why do they design a printer that doesn't have some simple mechanism for clearing jammed paper?

I shouldn't have even tried to tackle the printer in my sleepless state of mind. I'm a total klutz with a screwdriver under the best of circumstances, and I had no reason to believe that the piece I was trying to loosen would allow me to get at the jammed paper. When you know you're making a bad situation worse but can't stop yourself, there's some kind of pathology at work there.

Every time I get mail for someone whose address is several blocks away, I wonder who's getting my mail.

After I got home this afternoon, I finally did something I've been putting off for — well, for months, to be honest. I've moved twice since the last time I washed my car, and the recent rains have shown their effect. It would be embarrassing, if I cared. Instead, it was just disgusting.

There isn't a really great place to do the job here at the new place. There's no asphalt or concrete surface anywhere within reach of a hose, but it was just dumb luck that I found a spot where the combination of runoff and ground conditions helped prevent any serious mud puddling.

Now I'm fit to go out in public again. I didn't even want to go to a gas station with my vehicle in that sorry condition. And I'm at the point that I was going to be stranded by Monday if I didn't fill the tank. Not that I have any particular place to go, of course.

What I didn't do today:

• I didn't place the ant stakes around the house (and I do still have ants inside, but just one or two at a time).

• I didn't tackle the pile of change-of-address cards that have been sitting on my table for a month. (The address on the envelope doesn't seem to affect where the post office delivers it anyway.)

• I didn't do any watering (except the spill-off from washing the car).

• I didn't get any office work done (even though I left early on Friday knowing I would have to catch up this weekend).

• I didn't read the two weeks of newspapers I've been hoarding. (Instead I pulled out a few articles and stuffed the rest of the pile in the recycle bin.)

• I didn't make any life-changing decisions or commitments. (But I did take a nap.)