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Day in the Life: Mid-December 2022

Cait mentioned that she would be interested in reading a Day in the Life post. I love to read those posts, when other bloggers post them! It is so fascinating to see what other people do with their time. My days never look like one another, which is… good. But a LOT of time is spent in front of my computer, so… that doesn’t necessarily make for interesting reading? 

I thought I would give it a shot anyway. Here’s a random day from this past week (mid-December 2022):

  • 6:45 – Alarm goes off. It was so windy last night that I kept waking up and I feel like I slept horribly. I hit the snooze button – unwise. 
  • 6:54 – I stagger out of bed. My feet are feeling much better during the day, but they are stiff and sore in the mornings. I go climb into bed with Carla and sing her the Good Morning song. She wants to sleep a little longer, so I set a timer for three minutes and do the Wordle, the free version of Spelling Bee, and the free mini crossword at NYT online. 
Disclosure: I tried to take pictures throughout the day as I was taking notes on what I did, but I forgot some. So this is a screen grab of today’s mini, rather than the one I did earlier in the week.
  • 7:00 – The timer goes off and I coax Carla into telling me what she wants for breakfast. (French toast sticks and strawberries.)
  • 7:05 – I put some French toast sticks in the microwave and then dash upstairs to the laundry folding center guest room where I grab a shirt (black) and fleece-lined leggings (black) and a pair of socks (also black) from the pile. I take them downstairs and throw them into the dryer to warm up so Carla can be roasty toasty when she gets dressed. 
  • 7:10 – Carla comes downstairs, opens the day’s advent calendar door, and I give her breakfast. She and I chat while she eats. Usually I take this time to make tea, but my husband is on call so he is still home and getting his coffee and lunch together so I stay out of his way. Carla and I give him kisses and hugs as he heads out the door.
  • 7:30 – I rinse Carla’s dishes for her (this is a treat; rinsing the dishes is her job) and put them in the dishwasher. I wipe down the counters. My phone chimes with a reminder that Carla needs to bring her instrument to school and she assures me that it’s all ready to go. While she’s upstairs, I tuck a couple of gifts I wrapped last night under the tree.
  • 7:40 – I brush my teeth and hair and wash my face, which is still itchy and inflamed. While I brush my teeth, I stretch my feet and calves. 
  • 7:45 – Carla and I put on shoes and coats and get into the car. 
  • 7:55 – I drop Carla off at school. I feel so lucky, daily, that we live so close to school. I remind her to look for her gym shoes in the lost and found (sigh).
  • 8:15 – I speed through Trader Joe’s grabbing frozen latkes for Hanukkah this weekend and some baby corn and English peas for Carla. Luckily, the store is nearly empty this early in the morning and I am in and out in five minutes flat.
  • 8:35 – Back home. I put the kettle on to boil. I start a load of towels in the wash and fold some laundry on the (clean) kitchen counter while I listen to an audiobook. 
  • 8:50 – I get dinner going in the crockpot. 
  • 9:00 – I drink tea and eat some breakfast while reading blog posts. 
  • 9:15 – Then I write a blog post of my own.
  • 9:45 – I have presents to wrap, which I don’t enjoy. But I do enjoy listening to my audiobook while I wrap them.
  • 10:00 – I shlep my laptop down to the basement and walk on the treadmill while I work on my current manuscript.
  • 11:30 – I am sweaty and at a good stopping point. Even though I walked for 90 minutes, it doesn’t feel like I did much – I have to keep the treadmill on a very low speed or I can’t type. I throw on my coat and go for a quick walk outside – it’s drizzling and cold and the damp air feels good on my hot face. I listen to my audiobook while I walk.
  • 12:00 – I take a shower. Ugh, I have to wash my hair today which means I have to dry it. I normally read an ebook while I dry my hair, but today I review some materials a client sent me in preparation for our meeting today. 
  • 12:45 – I throw a load of white laundry into the washing machine. Do I have time to eat lunch before my meeting? No, I do not. 
  • 1:00 – I jump on Zoom for a thirty-minute meeting with a client about a smallish project – a profile of a community philanthropist.
  • 1:30 – I do a quick draft of the profile while my thoughts are still fresh from our call. 
  • 2:00 – I remove the towels from the dryer and take them upstairs to the guest room, where I dump them on the bed. I grab another load of dirty clothes, take them downstairs, put the clean whites into the dryer and load the washer and run it. Back upstairs, I fold laundry and listen to my audiobook.
  • 2:30 – Still listening, I go make myself some tacos with leftover mahi-mahi. This is when I decide I know The Big Twist in the book I’m reading. It’s interesting– I think Jennifer Hillier is a brilliant writer – and I want to see how it all plays out. And to see, of course, if I’m right.
  • 2:50 – My mother-in-law calls and I chat with her for a few minutes. Then I do the lunch dishes.   
  • 3:00 – I have a few more holiday cards to address and stamp, so I take care of that and tape some boxes of holiday gifts closed so that I can mail them.
  • 3:15 – The laundry beeps so I carry up another load, do some more folding. There are a bunch of little odds and ends that have gathered in various rooms, so I move them to their homes (some of them live in the trash). Clean clothes in the dryer, the last load of the day in the washing machine.
  • 3:40 – Carla has an extra-curricular activity tonight, so I have a little extra time. I load her instrument into the car along with three boxes that I need to mail to my far-flung family.
  • 3:50 – I mail the boxes. Yikes. I totally understand why people prefer to have Amazon and Target etc. do their mailing for them; it is expensive! I determine to swallow my frustration about people sending me gifts to wrap instead of them wrapping and mailing things themselves. 
  • 4:15 – I go to the bank. Then I dash over to Starbucks to buy gift cards for Carla’s extracurricular instructors. I realize I forgot to bring Carla a snack so I grab her a bag of popcorn as well.
  • 4:30 – I wait in the car line to pick up Carla. It is one of my favorite parts of the day, seeing her little face break through the throng of kiddos milling about as they wait for their parents. 
  • 4:50 – I drop Carla off at her music lesson. Then I go to Kohl’s to wander around. I’m hunting for one last gift for my husband. I usually avoid Kohl’s – it is SO crowded and the line moves SO slowly – but tonight it is nearly empty. I find a pair of deeply-discounted pajama pants that I think he’ll love. There is no one in front of me at the register so I’m back in my car in no time.
  • 5:15 – I’m waiting for Carla to finish her lesson. While I wait, I have an idea for how to move my manuscript forward and I type notes to myself in an email.
  • 5:45 – Carla’s done with her music lesson. I drive her home.
  • 6:15 – I urge Carla to finish the mug she made for one of her extracurricular instructors. She is very weary of making mugs, but she volunteered to make this one, and tomorrow is the day we need to drop it off. While she works on it, I make her dinner (a hamburger patty with pickles, tomato, and cheddar cheese on the side, some rice, and some cut up kiwi). While the burger cooks, I sit at my computer and try to translate my earlier notes into coherent prose.
  • 7:00 – Oh my goodness, it’s already 7:00! I call Carla up to eat and cut up broccoli for my husband’s and my dinner. The lemon garlic chicken has been smelling SO intensely of garlic all day I wonder if I did something wrong. (Added too much garlic, I think, even though that sounds impossible.) 
  • 7:15 – After I cut the broccoli, I sit beside Carla at the counter and read her three chapters of the book we are reading. I really, vehemently dislike the book (there is too much fat-phobia and bathroom talk and also it is fully ridiculous.), but she thinks it’s funny.
  • 7:45 – Yikes. We got caught up in the book and it is now fifteen minutes past the time Carla is supposed to be in bed! I send Carla upstairs to shower and then dash into the basement to put a coat of ModPodge on the mug she just made.
  • 7:50 – My husband arrives home. He tells me about his day while I put some couscous on the stove.
  • 8:00 – I go up to kiss Carla goodnight, sure she will want her Daddy to read to her, but she asks me to read her another chapter in our book. I ask my husband to stir the couscous and take it off the heat once most of the water is gone. (Carla adds, very serious, “Whatever you do, Daddy, DON’T put couscous down the garbage disposal!”)  
  • 8:30 – I kiss Carla goodnight and go downstairs. My husband is in his office, taking a call from the hospital. I spend about twenty minutes on this blog post then run downstairs to put another coat of ModPodge on the mug.
  • 9:00 – My husband comes into the kitchen. I put some broccoli in the microwave to steam.
  • 9:10 – We sit down to eat and chat. The chicken is edible, but not good. I’m not sure what I did wrong this time – I’ve made it a million times before. Maybe it was just in the crockpot way too long.
  • 9:30 – We watch an episode of Station Eleven and then an episode of Abbott’s Elementary. My poor husband is asleep halfway through the latter. Once the show is over, I prepare his coffee for tomorrow and kiss him goodnight, leaving him to sleep on the couch. Poor guy. 
  • 11:00 – I apply a final layer of ModPodge to Carla’s mug. Then I wash my face and brush my teeth and do my feet/calf stretches. Then I change into pajamas and get into bed.
  • 11:15 – I stretch my feet with an old bathrobe belt (sounds weird, but it is very effective) and read a few pages of The Accomplice before I fell my eyelids getting heavy. Lights out, time to sleep.

Whew. This was an extremely busy day, but when I type it out, it looks so full of NOTHING. I would say that it is fairly representative of a typical day in my life, even though most days don’t involve so much laundry or so much gift wrapping/preparation/mailing. 

If my math is right, I spent between four and a half and five hours on writing projects (blog posts, novel, and freelance work) over the course of this day. Ideally, I would spend the entire seven-ish hours Carla is at school writing, but when you mix in things like grocery shopping, laundry, eating, and exercise, it almost never works out that way. Add in all the extra nonsense of Christmas preparations, and the time shrinks even more. Yes, I realize that some of this is lack of discipline: I could devote all the time Carla is at school to writing, and reserve the rest of the day for errands, exercise, etc. I am making choices about how I spend my time, and that’s something I am constantly examining and trying to revise. Still, four-to-five-ish hours is a good chunk and I’m grateful for it. 

Do you have any questions or post requests for me? If so, feel free to submit them here.

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Ask Me Anything Answers, Part 3: Blogging

This week, I am chipping away at some of the creative, thought-provoking questions readers have been asking. This round of lovely questions is all about blogging. 

A photo of me posting this post – so meta

From JoyMarieCooks of Vegan Husband, Omnivore Wife:

How did you decide to blog and what’s been (a) the best thing (b) the most surprising thing and (c) the worst thing about blogging?

The first blogs I ever read were wedding planning blogs, way back in 2007. It must have been from Wedding Bee that I found the first personal blogs I started reading, although I can’t really remember which blogs they were. Almost none of those blogs I read from the beginning exist today. But what struck me was that they were so friendly, so conversational, and that they mostly seemed to be about women like me, who were newly engaged or married and who just wanted to chat about their experiences. 

When my husband and I moved to a brand new city in a brand new state so he could begin his medical residency, I started this blog. I can’t remember my exact reasoning, only that I’d been thinking about it for a long time. Since I worked remotely, and had just moved to a place where I knew almost no one, I thought it would be a good way to process my thoughts about wifehood and moving and being married to a doctor.

The most surprising thing about blogging is how important it has become to me. It’s a potent combination of diary and slumber party, maybe? I can be honest here in a way I feel I can’t be elsewhere – I can talk about the minutiae of day-to-day life without watching anyone’s eyes glaze over, I feel like I can be chatty with friends with no worries about whether people are gossiping about me behind my back. (Although maybe they are; who knows.) There was a time when life felt too busy and stressful to blog regularly, and I missed it and I am so glad that it is a regular feature of my life again. 

The worst thing about blogging is that the friendships don’t translate into real life. I can’t call you up and say, “Hey, I’m bringing over cookies and wine!” or invite you over to watch reruns of Schitt’s Creek. I want to do that. Although I admit I’m a little afraid, too – what if you don’t like Real Life Suzanne? (I am mainly the same as Blog Suzanne, just less wordy and much more awkward.) So even as this community uplifts me and makes me feel included and supported and part of something, it can also be a little lonely. 

From Ally of The Spectacled Bean:

As a longtime blogger thinking about your approach to personal blogging, which is more important to you: writing your own posts then replying to all the comments you’ve received– OR reading other bloggers’ posts and leaving comments for them? That is, do you see your role primarily as a creator or a coach?

This is SUCH a thought-provoking question. I’ve been considering it for a long time. Starting at the end of the question, I have literally never thought of myself in terms of either a creator or a coach. I suppose if I were to put a label on myself, and what I do here, I would call myself a community member. My blog isn’t geared toward anything in particular; it’s just me, posting about my silly little life, trying to engage with other people. The writing part is valuable for me, because it allows me to work through my own thoughts, allows me to empty my brain. But the engagement is even more valuable, because it enables me to feel like I belong to something big and warm and friendly. Maybe most bloggers are more intentional about their goals as a blogger, or their designs for content, and that’s great. But for me, it’s more of a conversation.

That said, I don’t think I have a specific philosophy about commenting. I try to read all the blogs I can, and comment on them as frequently as possible. Sometimes I try to respond to comments on my posts, but I don’t respond to all of them; perhaps to my detriment, I don’t know. I like it when other bloggers respond to my comments, but I don’t mind it when they don’t. And sometimes it doesn’t feel “right” to respond, or sometimes I don’t have time, or I can’t find the right way to say what I want to say. I do, however, read every single comment anyone posts, and appreciate the time and energy required both to read my lengthy droning and to share your thoughts. 

From Stephany of Stephany Writes: 

What made you decide to make (and keep!) your blog completely anonymous?

At first, I think the decision was made out of embarrassment? Or maybe shyness is a more accurate term? I wanted to write things, maybe personal things, and I didn’t want anyone to know it was ME writing them. (That’s so dumb, because I feel like the people reading this do know me. Maybe even know me better, in some ways, than people who don’t read this blog.) Then it became a matter of me wanting to write about things that I wouldn’t necessarily want connected back to my husband – like, do his patients need to read a post about how cute I think he looks in scrubs? No, they do not. 

While the latter is still true, I also think that the anonymity is for my sake. My mom read my blog for awhile (and still may; I don’t know and prefer not to!) and when I thought about her reading my posts, my writing felt stilted, like I was being watched. I’ve had a couple of real-life/pre-blogging friends read this blog, and that was okay, but it still felt a little uncomfortable. Like has your spouse/parent/sibling ever looked over your shoulder while you were writing an email or a text? A perfectly ordinary, non-controversial, non-scandalous email or text? I hate that; it makes me very self-conscious. Knowing people I know in the offline world read my blog is kind of like that feeling.

At one point, I got word that someone who knew my husband read this blog… maybe she still does, I don’t know. But THAT was super awkward, because I felt like everything I said reflected on him. Now I didn’t have to just worry that my mom was wondering HOW I’d gotten through college using quite so many exclamation points, but I had to worry that my husband’s colleagues were thinking he was married to a weird overly enthusiastic dolt. It sucks, but my writing does reflect on him, in a way. I think that’s part of the reason that I don’t like to discuss politics or Big Subjects – because I don’t want anyone misconstruing my poorly-constructed thoughts as his. (The other part is that the world is FULL of intelligent – and not – discourse on Big Subjects that we can choose to read. Plus, that’s not what I want to write about, so I don’t write about it.) Also, I do write a lot about my experiences parenting here… and I don’t want Carla to be googleable because of that. 

I would say that at this point, it’s a very loose approximation of anonymity. But that’s okay. I like the facade. 

Thank you all so much for your questions! If you have any other questions you’d like me to answer, about blogging or anything else, feel free to fill out my Ask Me Anything form.

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.