It had been a really bad day at the office. I'm sure you know what I mean. Whether you are an astronaut or a postal worker, there are days when you leave muttering, "They don't pay me enough to put up with this nonsense."

Head down, shoulders sagging, grim-faced, I trudged to the parking lot and decided that I would stop at the grocery store on the way home.

I would cook myself out of this funk.

Once there, I threw items into my grocery cart that I generally don't allow myself to purchase. Specialty items, like cashews and imported cheese. Produce that costs dearly this time of year -- limes and tomatoes.

I bought Vidalia onions instead of common yellow ones. Baby red potatoes instead of all-purpose whites. Imported olive oil that shone like liquid emeralds in the bottle. Elephant garlic and rosemary.

When I got to the checkout line, I handed over my credit card without looking at the cash register display. Just bag it up and show me where to sign, I said to a slightly baffled clerk.

I unloaded the groceries not onto shelves and into refrigerator bins, but all over my kitchen table and counter top. I opened a bottle of wine, turned on the portable television set that is my kitchen companion and began to cook like mad.

It was already 7 p.m. -- late for a morning person like me -- but I fired up the stove, pulled out the cutting board and started chopping.

I am not much of a cook, but there are a handful of dishes that I have made often enough to do well. Needing no more setbacks, these were the recipes I chose. Taken together, they might not make an appealing dinner party menu. But they have in common many steps and much chopping, and that is just what the doctor ordered.

Throughout the evening, the level in the wine bottle dropped and the level in the compost pile rose. I made three trips there, carrying peels, egg shells, rinds, seeds and cores. The can opener groaned often, and I banged the empty cans into the recycling bin.

I cut up a chicken, placed it at the bottom of a crock pot and layered on green pepper, onion, garlic, wine, a half-dozen spices. I poured tomato sauce over the whole business and plugged it in.

I made potato salad, pasta salad, fruit salad and a salad dressing so full of garlic that the kitchen would still smell of it at breakfast. I grated cheese and beat eggs for a quiche and I eagerly dug into a pile of cold ground pork with my bare hands, mixing the ingredients for meatballs.

I cobbled together leftovers for a casserole and bagged individual portions of vegetables and dip for after-school snacks. I did everything but bake. My confused family, resigned to the Mother Hubbard's cupboard of the working woman, would wake and think the elves visited while they slept

It was after midnight when I loaded the dishwasher for the third time that evening. I felt tired from honest work instead of weary from office politics, and I slept.

I have often said that women do not define themselves by their jobs, as men so often do. Work is something women also do. And, unlike men, I think women are more likely to wonder why they take on the aggravation outside the home when they no doubt have plenty inside the home.

But I have also thought that work and family create a balance that women understand very well: Just when the kids have thrown a fit and called her a stupid mother, it is time to go to the office where she is paid for that kind of abuse. And just when she is sure no job can be worth this aggravation, it is time to go home and take up the sacred task of raising children.

Or cutting vegetables.

After that bad day at the office, I chose to cook. But I have just as often retreated into other homey tasks: scrubbing out the toaster oven and the microwave and bleaching the kitchen counters, cleaning out the cupboards under the sinks, sorting clothes for Goodwill, paying bills and balancing the checkbook, weeding the garden.

Whatever the task, it helps me reclaim my turf, mark my territory.

I don't get paid enough to do those tasks, either. As a matter of fact, I get paid nothing. But they are the priceless antidote to a bad day at the office.