Oh, that Trish. She comes up with the neatest stuff. The other day she invited us to document a typical day and then to share them all on March 27. I joked with her that she’d fall asleep if she read about mine so jab jab, don’t fall asleep! Okay? Ready?

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

4:20 – I wake. Shower. Get dressed. My in real life friends are so glad that I shower!

4:30-4:45 – Go downstairs. Pop a piece of toast in the toaster. Turn on the morning news. Do make-up while listening. As you can see from the time used, my routine is minimal at best. A quick swipe of lipstick and some eye shadow and I am good to go. Unless I wake up looking dead, then I use some BB Blur cream. Today, the cream got used.

4:45-4:50 – The Otter Pup staggers down for her morning treat which happens to be a sweet potato stick from Trader Joe’s. After her treat, I give her snuggles and then tuck her into her downstairs bed. Pink blanket and all. She is a crazy little sleep head in this pic!

4:50-5:00 – Fix hair. This consists of some styling cream, a brush, safety goggles to prevent a repeat of the eye stabbing that took place several weeks ago and hair spray.

5:00-5:05 – Prepare breakfast for The Girl. Today, it’s a bowl of cereal. Sometimes it’s toast with PB. Breakfast MUST be ready when I wake her up because the Otter Pup and I do not like loud slamming and screaming in the morning. Also, toss some food into my lunch box to eat later. Today, it’s an egg salad sandwich made the night before.

5:05 – Run upstairs to get The Girl up. She groans. I toss stuff into the laundry basket. I then return and tell her that breakfast is on the table. She groans. The Otter Pup comes up to get her moving. Today it’s loud barking. Some days, it’s a nip to the butt. I run back downstairs.

5:10-5:15 – Get my bag ready for work. Grab toast that I forgot about. Make an iced coffee. Blowing kisses at The Girl, who is still half asleep but eating, I run out the door. Her brother is still asleep but The Hub and Pup take it from here. Run back to write out check to the gardener. Almost forgot. Also leave a note for The Teen to remember his SAT workbook for class tonight.

5:15-5:55 – Jump in the car. Turn on radio. Drive, drive, drive 25 miles to campus. At this hour, the traffic is not bad. Pull into favorite parking spot. Make the short walk to my building, seen below. I work in the basement (garden level but there is no garden) of the library. No windows down there.

6:00 – The Girl calls me. Wants to know what time I am picking her up. The same time as always, 4:50 p.m. She says, “Okay” and then tells me what the pup is doing. I tell her to have a good day. I ask her if her brother is up. She says “sort of” and then I tell her I love her and to have a good day and remind her to do her homework at daycare. She groans at me. I say goodbye.

6:05-6:45 – Say “hi” to custodian in the hallway. She doesn’t speak any English but always smiles really big. I really have to go to the ladies room but she just mopped so I skip it. Arrive at office. I keep the door locked because weirdos hang out on campus in the wee morning hours. Make tea. Pull Kindle out. Get comfy in shameless reading spot. Read a little. Check phone a little.

6:45-7:15 – Check work email. Update some webpages. Glance at Facebook to see what the heck has gone on since the night before. Spend a few minutes in Feedly catching up on blogs. Check and answer personal emails.

7:15-9:00 – More work stuff. Emails. I can’t seem to get through them. One has to do with troubleshooting an issue but the person doesn’t give me any info to go on. Freshen up tea. Search for content for some news articles I need to draft.

9:00-9:20 – Run to next building to attend a change management meeting. This is where everyone decides what services will be maintained and when, to not cause problems with multiple outages going on at the same time.

9:25-10:00 – Answer more emails. Write-up some survey answers for a web discovery project. Pop a cup of tea into the microwave.

10:05-12:00 – Grab tea. Head to training lab to assist co-worker with a training session on our web content management system. While there, answer work emails, write-up outage notification, draft some news items, check personal email. Help participants with class exercises. Answer questions.

12:05-1:10 – Return to office to grab lunch. Head back to empty lab to catch Breaking Bad on Netflix. I am on Season 4, episode 10. Of course, one this posts I will be done with season four.

1:15-2:00 – Answer more web discovery survey questions. Not sure how to answer these. Review webpages for old content and broken links. Contact appropriate areas for any outages taking place this weekend. Publish news items sent to me by the student.

2:00-3:10 – Pull some images for a design project I am working on. It’s for an event in May but probably needs to be done soon for marketing purposes.

3:15-3:30 – Took a break. Contacted junior high about choir auditions for The Girl and then chatted it up with another blogger in chat.

3:30-4:00 – Attempting to troubleshoot an issue that really doesn’t belong to me but no one seems to be helping her so I shall. It would help if I had the access to actually look something up.

4:00-4:55 – Leave work. Cannot leave fast enough. Head to car. Turn on radio. Drive home. Traffic is okay. Not too bad. I take this road over a mountain to avoid the freeway, which is packed at this time. As you can see, others have the same idea.

4:55-5:05 – Pick up The Girl at daycare/school. Ask her if she has her sweater, homework, etc. She gets upset because she made “food craft” which is a pretzel and it’s not done cooking so we wait for the damn pretzel.

5:05 – Head home, which is just down the street.

5:10-5:15 – Arrive home. Call out for The Teen. Forgot he is at his SAT prep class. Get The Girl to unpack her backpack. Make her a snack before track practice (fruit, cheese, crackers & pretzel). Open mail, get bags ready for the next day. Dinner?

5:15 – Hub calls and says he is stuck at work with Time Warner and an internet issue. Can I take The Girl to track practice? I guess. I wander around kitchen and throw a tuna casserole together with the meager items found in the pantry. Pop in the oven to cook.

5:45 – I take The Girl to track practice. Come home. The Teen calls me and wants to know who is picking him up at 7. I was JUST there. Geesh! Told him that hopefully his dad will.

6:15 – Dinner is a mess. Gluten free pasta does not bake up well in the oven. Tossed it into the trash as I cannot salvage it. No dinner and the entire house smells fishy. Grilled cheese?

6:30 – Throw a load of laundry in. Open mail. Hub calls and says he is finally on his way home. I tell him to pick up The Teen.

7:20-7:50 – Go to high school/track to wait for The Girl’s practice to be over. Chat with another mom.

7:50 – Get The Girl. She wants jelly beans. They hand out jelly beans after practice so I wait for her and then drive her home. I do a lot of waiting around, don’t I? Take laundry out and throw it into dryer.

8:05-8:30 – Late dinner. Kids eat cereal and waffles. Hub comes home.

8:30-9:00 – Get The Girl to shower and put her stuff out for tomorrow. Tuck her in. We say goodnight which the Otter Pup “helps” with, knee nip included.

9:00-9:45 – Watch a little TV. Too tired to stay up long. I introduce The Teen to season one, episode one of The Walking Dead. He watches the show with me now but has never seen episode one. Imagine! During he show, I fold the laundry.

9:45-10:15 – Go upstairs and get ready for bed. Read for about fifteen minutes. My current night-time read is In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. Sometimes I will read a little of the Bible from an app but my eyes are bugging me so I skip this. The Otter Pup jumps on my back and falls asleep.

10:20 – The Hub comes up and makes a bunch of noise which of course wakes the pup up.

10:20-10:45 – I prattle on about the day, what’s coming up this week, etc. Hub is already out and yet I am wide awake. I probably fall asleep somewhere about 11:20.

Thoughts:

Kind of exhausting, isn’t it? And this day didn’t even include play rehearsal which is usually squeezed in between practice and dinner. Since The Girl didn’t get a big part, she doesn’t have as many Wednesday night rehearsals and since The Teen had SAT prep, he didn’t go to rehearsal either.

I realized after I wrote this up that I never had dinner that night.

Documenting all of this was really hard to do. I find that a lot of the time I am on auto-pilot with all the kid stuff but putting it in writing really makes me wonder how I make it through the week. Most of my days have more stuff going on and then the weekends are not used for rest, which is a problem for me.

I suppose I should use this as a reason to change things up but there really isn’t much I can change with the kids being where they are right now. They’ve given up activities too and yet, the day is still full.

I have to ponder this some more as the process of documenting it all has left me a tad depressed. No time for fun carved out in any of this. I am just a bucket full of sadness today!

Have you ever documented an entire day?