BBTW: A Day in the Life.

I’ve started these before but I usually feel silly halfway through and don’t publish (even though I love reading them!). This time it’s for a cause! It’s for Ginger’s BBTW! Done! Prepare to be amazed! Or bored! By a day in my life! (do not be dissuaded by the constant change in tenses, for I am not changing it).

So I didn’t decide to do this until 8:42am, so a) there are no photos from before that time and b) I don’t know how the day will turn out so it might possibly be the most boring thing you’ll ever read. Only time will tell.

4:48am woke up from a very bad dream, cuddled into my husband because it was a bad dream about him and I needed reassurance. Unfortunately I can’t actually sleep while touching anyone so I was in and out of sleep after that.

5:30am I hear children. Apparently they have decided it’s time to rise. C goes into their room to tell them if they’re up they need to take books into their beds and be quiet. Quiet is not in their vocabulary but there’s no fighting so I think it’s a win.

6:00am My alarm goes off. C gets up to hit the snooze three times, I mull over whether I really need a shower this morning. I decide against it.

6:23am Up, dressed and considered make up. Did enough to not look like death. Pulled my dirty hair in a ponytail. We’re good.

6:30am Started breakfast for me (one egg and one egg white scrambled w/ half a slice of cheddar melted on top) and packed lunch for me (leftover sesame noodles from the night before with some shredded briefcase chicken, and an orange) and for Spencer (cinnamon raisin bread with peanut butter, mini sweet rice cakes, dried apricots and an orange). Threw my breakfast and lunch in my lunchbag.

6:45am kisses and out the door. In the meantime the kids have gotten dressed (and I’ve barked at them eight times to do so) and are now eating muffins while C gets dressed. He works from home most of the week, so he takes them to daycare and school every day.

7:10am I pull into my parking space, happy that no one has decided to steal it today. I’m slightly annoyed that the time change means I miss the sunrise now, and have to wear sunglasses on my drive. Early morning driving was so peaceful.

7:15am WORK! I start pulling the work I have to do for the day, read and comment on a few blogs. Post mine for today. Heat up my breakfast (only a few seconds! No one has to smell microwave eggs, I swear!) and make my coffee. We all went in on a Keurig about six months ago, and a couple weeks ago I bought a reusable K-cup so I’ve been making fresh coffee every morning. It’s delightful.

8:30am Lament about how since my desk went to two monitors, my keyboard is too far away from the left side of my desk when I need to type while I review something or pay bills. My assistant solves the problem by finding me a spare cabinet I can wheel under my desk, and wheel out when I need it. Score! I may also stick my La Croix in it so I don’t look like a junkie w/ my 12-packs.

8:42am reading blogs checking in on twitter and facebook, decide to start this Day in the Life thing.

8:58am Back to work. Lots of work. Work doesn’t end. 80s on 8 might help – hey look, Rolling Stones Start Me Up – perfect!

9:08am Okay, really this time.

11:48am stopped working for a few minutes so I could get some additional information from someone on a file I was working on. Read and commented on a few blogs.

11:56am Ugh. Working again.

12:20pm Finally finish the work I was desperately trying to complete. Lunchtime! I’m reading Ken Follet’s Fall of Giants, and it’s pretty good but LONG which is obviously not getting me anywhere towards my reading goal but a good book is better than a bunch of short crappy books, I always say. Except when I’m in the mood for a short crappy book. I usually hate sitting at my desk to have lunch but I’ve just made out-of-the-office lunch plans for the next two days so at my desk I am.

1:05pm Back to work. Ish.

1:52pm Quick break to look into recipes made with Marshmallow Fluff.

2:02pm Amazingly, I have finished all the tasks I had specifically put had on my plate for today at work, which rarely happens. Which is not to say that I have nothing more to do, but it is a load off my back. Now to do all the other little things I didn’t specifically task for!

2:13pm Hey look, blog comments! Damn, back to work.

2:17pm. I demand hot tea from the Keurig. Wonder if I could take apart tea bags and use my reusable k-cup, but in the meantime I’ve got some Earl Grey. What I’d really like is a snack, but I have none and my assistant is down to candy corn. One got stuck in my throat yesterday and I’m not looking to repeat that nonsense. Oh look! Whoppers!

3:18pm Break out in song: Straight Up by Paula Abdul hits the radio. You’re welcome for that earworm.

4:00pm exactly – OUT!

4:25pm At daycare to pick up the minions. Hurray! (I had to try for five minutes to get them both smiling and not complaining about sore toes or pointing out the airplane through the moonroof and thereby covering their faces completely. Small miracles here.

(outtakes)

4:35pm Home, and C has already gotten the bikes out and started checking the tires. Earlier I had texted to see if he wanted to do a family bike ride or play baseball in the yard. He chose bike ride so here we are! We change out of work/school clothes and head out. You would think a family bike ride on the local trail would be easy and idyllic, but it's half idyllic and half complaining about helmets being too tight and I want water and I have to pee. But we do a 4.5 mile loop and get home with the shine still mostly on family time.

5:45pm When I suggest family exercise, C suggested going for sushi afterward. Meal plan, shmeal plan. I make dinners for the kids because they only eat edamame at the sushi place. 

6:10pm SUSHI! Yum! Henry insists to the point of meltdown that he wants to try one of the rolls, but when he gets it he is not impressed. Both want to try the ginger, both spit it out. "It's poisonous!" says Spencer. 

7:10pm On the way home, Henry falls asleep. I successfully not only transfer from car to bed, but I woke him up enough to pee and to take his allergy meds and STILL he slept. I am the master.

7:15pm Since tomorrow is parent-teacher conference night (!!!) I wanted to prep dinner so I just had to cook. Otherwise we'll be eating out, again. So I shaved 1lb of Brussel sprouts and shred 12oz of smoked Gouda. Dinner tomorrow is going to rock.

7:38pm Time to tackle the laundry. I've been ignoring this pile since Monday, but it needs to get done. C and I have an agreement - he runs most of the laundry (sometimes I'll run a load or two). I fold laundry, he hangs laundry. He hates to fold and I hate to hang. Plus, I have a system in folding so once I start I want NO help. It's a system!

8:00pm Socks. I have a strange obsession with correctly pairing socks, and pairing based on relative amount of ground in dirt from wearing socks outside. We're missing a batman sock, shit will hit the fan. Nothing more to say. (most of this is a-typical, there is usually a lot more sitting on my butt in the evenings, possibly some snacking on Halloween candy or cereal)

8:08pm I need a shower, and I also even decided to take out my contacts and blow dry my hair. Gotta make a good impression for parent/teacher conference!

8:45pm C has already passed out, so I take the chance to watch one of my shows that he doesn't watch - Bones. Hoping to make it through because I'm purely exhausted. There's no milk still (I meant to stop on the way home and forgot) so no snack for me. That's probably a good thing.

9:45pm Stayed awake for the show, but now it's lights out. That's all, folks.

Dream fights and eye cream

I woke up this morning at 4:45a near tears because I was having a dream that C had told me he wanted a divorce while we were at a family function – Easter, I think, based on the background goings on and who was there. The whole dream I was running around begging him to reconsider and telling him I would give up all my extracurricular activities, deleting my twitter account, crying. It was terrible.

 The dream made sense because it came on the heels of a friend announcing her separation, and while I don’t know what happened and wouldn’t even hazard a guess, it makes me sad. Sad for her, sad for the kids. Nine couples under the age of 35 attended my wedding in 2007. Four couples were engaged (only one of those couples went on to get married), one was dating, and four were married (two with first babies on the way). This marks the last of those couples to separate. Love to you, anonymous friend.

But on to other, more shallow, topics. Eye cream.

Six months ago I did not own any eye cream. NOW I have all these:

I’m not sure what works, I’m not sure if any of them work. I have terrible bags and dark circles under my eyes that concealer doesn’t seem to even help (it’s genetic, I have them, my mom has them, Spencer has them). There is firming cream and cream for dark circles and everything here. What am I missing? What’s the magic formula? (spoiler: I’m sure there’s no magic formula. But would anything help that I haven’t tried?)

Not-so-Guilty secrets

Henry has stopped drinking milk, outright. This pretty much even includes chocolate milk, and he won’t drink hot chocolate anyhow because it’s “hot” (I tried calling it lukewarm chocolate to no avail). We used to go through a gallon of milk in 4-5 days, but now it appears to be taking us two weeks to go through one, and that’s only because I started drinking it myself to get through it before it went bad.

Now here’s something you should know about me: I’m very attached to those dates on the top of milk that says when they expire. I know that technically it’s a “sell by” date and not a “drink by” date, but I just cannot get past that to drink what is probably fine milk. I’ve, pre-kids, been known to trash milk at all stages of empty/full because it automatically tastes icky to me even on the date on the bottle.

But. (of course there’s a but) With Henry not drinking milk and Spencer not drinking milk that much, at the “sell by” date of the most recent gallon, we had 75% of a gallon left. And we buy the organic stuff, so that’s $5 worth of milk! I couldn’t do it. I started drinking milk every day. I put it in my cooking. Here’s what I was left with:

That’s the last glass of milk which I drank last night (with some kit kats) and that’s the date on the gallon. While every day I thought “this is the day I drink spoiled milk” or “this is the day I feed my family food made with spoiled milk”, it didn’t go bad! Woah!

It’ll be half gallons from here on out. (and calcium chews for the kiddos)

Sick days are the longest days

So here I was gung-ho about the time change, and how we were going to be up at the crack of dawn anyhow so maybe we'd just have an extra long time at Disney and all would be excellent.

So no.

Spencer woke up with a tummyache and not wanting breakfast which is NOT like him, and went back to bed. Then the barf started (thankfully, for someone who doesn't throw up often, that child has an amazing ability to get down off his bunk bed and make it to the toilet before going full steam ahead). I am terrible with vomit but I held my own and then got him into the shower where he proceeded to feel so much better that he was singing Blue Danube in multiple octaves and dancing.

But it didn't last.

Keeping Henry away from him was also difficult - the boys share a room and are pretty much inseparable when Spencer's not at school. C took him to Target with him for Lysol and Gatorade, and I took him with me to the grocery store (and again to Target for another errand). Otherwise we let him watch a lot of television on the opposite side of the house, while Spencer stayed away from his brother's bed but otherwise spent the whole day watching movies on the portable DVD player and sleeping, taking up residence in the bedroom.

Sunday was the longest day ever. 1pm felt like 5pm. 4pm felt like 8pm. 8pm ... I was done.

By 8pm he was keeping soup and tylenol (low grade fever) down, and then he went back to bed for the night.

This morning he was soaking wet with sweat like he broke a fever, and was in a general foul mood. I hate leaving him to go to work, but C is home working so he's staying with him. This will be his first day missing of school since it started and I want to go home and be with him, but I can't and it sucks.

BBTW: Soundtrack to your life

I'm so glad Ginger kept last week's prompts up through this week - I wanted so much to do this one but where does the time go?

I'm not a huge music fan. Well, I am, really, but I haven't listened to anything new except by accident in many years. Every once in awhile a newer band creeps through my defenses and I will listen, but mostly I'm stuck in the 40s/50s/60s/70s/80s/90s. I'm eclectic, in a narrow way

Anything TMBG. I have been the biggest fan since I was 12. I've been to 17ish shows, taken my kids to see the kids show, taught my kids all the words to all the kids albums and we're working on the others. I once talked my boyfriend (now husband) into driving from here to Asheville to see them, following a hurricane for the entire 14 hours up (PS - The Orange Peel is an amazing venue). I haven't really gotten into the most recent album or two, but I still listen all the time to Flood, Apollo 18, Dial-a-Song. This is my jam.  One of my very favorite songs is New York City, but I remember so much listening to the words to Mr. Horrible over and over in seventh grade with my friend Amy to get all the words just right. You know how everyone wants to tell you where they were when the planes hit the towers on 9/11? I had cut German class to buy the new TMBG album (Mink Car). Anytime a friend hears anything by TMBG, they immediately think of me. I'm good with that.

Annie - The soundtrack. I had a record player when I was 8 or so, and one of the few records I had was the Annie soundtrack. Man, I loved that thing.

Rainbow Connection - from the same record player, I had the Muppet Movie soundtrack, and I adored Rainbow Connection. When I started playing the clarinet it was one of the songs in one of my books and I credit it with keeping me playing when I was seriously bad - I wanted to master that song.

Nothing Compares 2U - you remember when Walkmans were a big thing? I had a giant yellow one that was supposed to be waterproof. Not that I knew, because it's not like I took it in the water or anything, but it was SPECIAL. I would walk around singing Sinead O'Connor with my headphones on thinking I was hot shit. See also: anything Debbie Gibson, the Beaches soundtrack, and Gloria Estefan's Greatest Hits. I was totally hot shit.

Angel by Aerosmith - I was 14, and I had boyfriends here and there but there was this one forbidden guy. He was madly in love with a friend of mine who strung him along, and I was dating another guy but he lived too far away to see except during school (and band practice, natch). So (oh crap, I can picture him but I can't remember his name) came over and we were hanging out, talking about our respective "loves", and I was somehow sitting with my legs across his lap and I asked if he was thinking of R and he was all "I can't think of anyone but you right now ..." Sigh. And Angel was playing in the background. TOM! That was his name. Yep.

Brick, Ben Folds - my ex was a big Ben Folds fan (I think still is, he planned on naming his first born son Benjamin but I don't think he has kids) and we listened to a lot of BFF and TMBG for a bunch of years (Ben Folds' first solo album came out on 9/11, we were there together to buy our favorite bands' new albums). Brick always makes me think of him. It's ... yep. That's the song for that period of my life.

Newsies - you see a lot of soundtracks on this list, do you? Les Mis should also make the list (and Forbidden Broadway, while we're at it) and Jesus Christ Superstar but I feel something special in my heart every time I pop the soundtrack in. Carryin' the banner, always.

Cruel Intentions (soundtrack) After my first year of college, I decided to embraced college life (for a few months, until I met and lost myself in my ex and the bulk of my "college experience" went to shit). I signed up to be an orientation leader of my college, which included staying in the dorms and hanging out with the incoming freshmen. I met some friends and had a GREAT TIME learning to swing dance and going to swing clubs. You'd think that those songs would be on this list, right? Well, I still listen to them and love them, but I listened to this soundtrack a lot in my dorm room and every single time any of the songs come on the radio (Praise You by Fat Boy Slim comes on a lot) I'm transported to that time.

Eleanor Rigby - On my first date with my husband, he sang this to me. You would think it's not a romantic song, but it was his move. He had the counts down. He had the stereo system in his truck. It was pretty cool, and he knew it. Worked on me!

Mysterious Ways - U2 It's amazing how most of the songs that remind one of their past have to do with the opposite sex, isn't it? Nearly my entire senior year of high school I was either pining for one specific guy,  dating him, mourning the death of our relationship or plotting to get back together with him. (We're still friends, actually, and whenever I'm in his city I stay with his sister and hang out with the lot of them and all their spouses and kids). He loved to roam the hallways of the school belting out U2 lyrics at the top of his lungs. Well, I have a number of strange stories about him but this is the one that works for this list. Mysterious Ways was his favorite to yell (I can't call it singing) and most U2 reminds me of the fonder parts of that relationship.

Books I read: October

Another poor showing for my reading this month. I blame it on book 74 - which I carried around with me for two months without getting significantly through. I'm not going to expect to read 25 books in the next two months, so I doubt I'm getting to 100 but I've made my peace. Only books I like from here on out, okay?

72 These is My Words - Nancy Turner I did not expect to like this. It's historical fiction! But no, I really did like it and I would recommend anybody to read it no matter your genre preference. Really good!

73 Scavenger Hunt - Yvonne Montgomery I barely remember this book, but it was free and I think I liked it. It was a regular ole hard boiled murder mystery kind.

74 Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese Ugh. This was just not for me.

75 A Thousand Days in Tuscany - Marlena De Blasi This was not as good as the other books set in Tuscany, but it was okay.

76 Life After Life - Kate Atkinson I liked this, although I listened to the audiobook and the repetition which is so important in the written book is a bit grating to listen to. I really liked how she was on the edge of history though.

77 Lost and Found - Chris Van Hakes Shalini wrote a book and I had to read it immediately and I loved it immediately. It's a light chick-lit romance, and if you are into that kind of thing it was lovely.

Friday things

1) Today is the day I usually get my calendar for the upcoming month together, look to make sure I have all the information for any meetings I have, and generally do clean up on anything that didn’t get done yesterday due to the End of Month hoopla. Except I’m tired, man. Bone tired. I’m getting there, but far slower than is the norm.

2) Last night was Halloween, obviously. I have no pictures of trick or treating, mostly because I forgot but also because Henry wouldn’t allow me full use of my arm the entire night. We ended up going with our neighbors to a different neighborhood that is a lot more active, and wow – it’s way more fun when more of your neighborhood participates. I think I’m sold on the whole “bussing to the good neighborhoods”. We didn’t go to a more affluent neighborhood or anything (okay, not MUCH more affluent) but there were so many houses and adults getting into it – they all set up their chairs and tables in the driveway and you could see they enjoyed it as much as the kids. It makes me want to dress up next year (um, maybe). Henry was very shy because we were with a large group, and he never let go of my hand but he had a great time, and I barely saw Spencer because he was running crazy with the other kids so he obviously also had a good time. We go home late and the kids went to bed far past their bedtime and this morning was ROUGH but it was a good time. And hopefully Spencer’s teacher doesn’t expect anything from him today.

3) Today is report card day for Spencer. His first report card – I’m scared! He does great work, but he’s very slow so a lot of his papers come home unfinished and I’m worried that the world (school) doesn’t know how smart he is. Next Thursday is parent-teacher conference time … dun dun DUUUUNNNN.

4) I think I’m the sole person on the internet who is kind of excited about the time change this weekend. Yes, we get tired earlier. Yes, it gets darker earlier. Yes, the children wake up at 5am on the weekends for a little while. You know what else? I don’t have to drag myself out of bed in the morning for a little while. I don’t have to drag the kids out of their beds for school for a little while. I may even feel like exercising before work! Or get up in time to take a shower before work! It’s the little things – all the other things I can deal with. That’s why there’s tv on Saturday mornings.

5) I stuck to my meal plan this week! Life is so much simpler when I already know what I’m cooking. I made lemongrass chicken soup on Monday, peanut butter burgers and tater tots on Tuesday, grilled shrimp, lentil/couscous mix and cauliflower (with a poblano chile sauce) Wednesday, breakfast for dinner Thursday (waffles and sausage for the kids and waffles, sausage and eggs for the adults), and tonight I’m making loaded potato soup. I can’t remember what I have on the weekend, but I do know I have all the stuff for it so things are easy. Woohoo for easy.

6) I backtracked on anxiety pretty hardcore toward the end of last week and beginning of this week. I started new meds, and they were great for a couple weeks until my body got used to them and then WOAH BABY I bottomed out there. But my doctor is great (I know you don’t usually go to a PCP for such things, but I really feel like my NP has a good handle on these things and feels very knowledgeable and I’m very comfortable talking to her) and we decided to double my dosage and give me something for situational attacks and I’m hoping it works. I’ve been taking time to myself when I’m overwhelmed at home, and hopefully things will work quickly.

7) I have been waffling on whether to participate in NanoBloMo. I’m never going to be in for NanoWriMo (good luck to you guys!) but I wonder if I could do a blog a day. Would you read a blog a day? Is it pointless? I don’t want to write a bunch of pointless stuff just to take up space (which is not to say that those who participate DO write a bunch of drivel. I’m just not good at finding more things to write about). Hmm. I think maybe I’ll do NanoBloMo’, which is Blog More. I think I can do that.

Happy November! It’s thanksgiving month! Woohoo for turkey!