The Queen Of Frog Hat Creek

By: Steven Doornbos

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Meet Rachael, The Queen Of Frog Hat Creek:
Retirement at thirty sounds like a dream.
For most people, it’s the ultimate fantasy: sleeping in, sipping coffee on the porch, reading every book you never had time for, and—if you’re lucky—having a golden retriever that brings you slippers with soulful eyes and a wagging tail.
For Rachel, it was a 12-day vacation that turned into an existential crisis.
At first, it was amazing. No alarms. No emails. No customer complaints about broken zippers or missing return labels. No meetings that could’ve been memos. She’d wake up, pour her coffee, and actually taste it—not gulp it down while answering Slack messages or rehearsing a client pitch. Her six-year-old daughter, Clara, noticed the difference immediately.
“You’re smiling more,” Clara said one morning, in the observant way only kids seem to manage.
Rachel grinned back. “That’s because Mommy isn’t drowning in spreadsheets anymore.”
Clara nodded and returned to eating her waffles in the shape of cats. (Not cats on waffles—actual waffles shaped like cats. Rachel had a mold. Long story.)
Rachel had worked hard to get to this point. Really hard. She’d spent her twenties building a small business empire from a clutter-clearing side hustle into a thriving online home organization platform called Declutter Like You Mean It. People bought downloadable guides, hired her for Zoom consultations, and followed her on social media for daily “declutter hacks.”
It blew up bigger than she ever imagined.