A Day in the Life (for Monday, March 29, 2004)
1:08 am: Miz Poo wakes me by digging frantically at my back. She wants me to flip over on my left side so she can snuggle up against me and drape herself over my arm. I turn over and fall back asleep before she’s settled.
1:58 am: I wake up and have no feeling in my arm, most likely because a portly Poo is draped across it. I pull my arm out from under her, shake the feeling back into it, and turn over onto my right side.
2:02 am: I’m almost back to sleep when Miz Poo takes a running leap, springboards off of me, and lands on the pillow next to me. She digs frantically for a few minutes until I yell “Miz Pooty, STOP!”, and then curls up. I fall asleep before the grooming begins in earnest, thank god.
5:something am: The Bean jumps up on the bed and attacks my stomach. I wake up for an instant and then fall back asleep while he’s still attacking.
6:45 am: Fred wakes me up to say goodbye. I think about going back to sleep for another 45 minutes, but I have to get up and go feed-and-scoop at the petstore, so I roll my ass out of bed.
6:45 – 7:40 am: Get dressed, pop in my contacts, take my thyroid medication, clean out the litter box (don’t you wish I’d taken a picture of that?), check email, read blogs. Open blinds in living room, step outside to check the weather. The Bean and Miz Poo get excited by the open door and run outside. I step back inside and shut the door. (What? They can get in through the cat door!)
Cheapest gas in town!
7:40 – 7:55 am: Get in car. Drive toward petstore. Glance down at gas tank indicator THINGY and realize I’m driving on fumes. Ponder possible broken-ness of gank tank indicator THINGY. Yesterday I had 1/4 tank and today I’m on fumes. And I’ve gone nowhere at all since sometime last week. Is someone stealing my gas? (Doubtful) Gas tank indicator THINGY is possibly broken, and I should probably start gassing up when indicator (THINGY) indicates I have 1/2 tank of gas. Drive to gas station near petstore, fill up tank.
7:55 – 8:45 am: Arrive at petstore. Usually I have to hunt down a store manager to open the cat room door, but she sees me coming and opens the door before I get there. Same cats as last week, so I don’t take any pictures.
8:45 – 9:10ish am: Leave petstore and go to Target. Spend a good long time wandering around Target. I need to get a cushion for Fred’s writing chair (more about that later), and while I want to buy something really girly or country that will horrify him, the only cushion that will fit the chair is a sedate tan color. I toss it in the cart. I buy a bag of bird seed, since we’re running out, and a new trash can (actually, it’s a basket) for the master bathroom. I also buy a basket to set atop the toilet tank, in which I intend to put the 3,000 bathroom books sitting there. It’ll make it easier when I need to move everything to wipe the top of the tank. I peruse the book section, picking up Sophie Kinsella’s
latest. I put it in my cart, then stop to reflect on the bookcase full of books I have yet to read, realize that surely by the time I get around to reading this book it will have come out in paperback and buying it right now just because I’ve seen it is stupid. I put it back. As I’m heading for the front of the store, there’s a woman halfway across the store who is pushing a stroller (carriage?) with a tiny, very unhappy baby inside. The baby’s wails are painful – I feel like someone’s pounding a stake through my eardrums – and I think judgementally about the fact that she not only is doing nothing to soothe the baby, but she appears to not hear the baby at all. Then I tell myself to shut up and stop being a bitch, and go to check out.
I pass this road at least twice a week. I’ve been meaning to snap a picture of the sign for at least two years now! Nance, look! It’s a road named after you!
9:10 – 9:25 am: Drive home, listening to my cd of mp3s. Nothin’ But the Wheel and Here I am, by Patty Loveless. Politics, Religion and Her, by Sammy Kershaw. Love Sammy Kershaw. But unfortunately that ho Lorrie Morgan has her perfectly manicured claws in him. Hm. Or
does she? (Holy crap, he’s her fifth husband!) A very long live version of Black by Pearl Jam comes on as I pull up in the driveway. When I walk through the door, the Bean is snoozing in his nest, and he glances up at me to make sure I’m not about to
thunk him on the head or anything before he goes back to sleep.
9:30 – 10:10: Ellipticize on the elliptical trainer while watching an episode of Once & Again. I love the elliptical trainer, and I love that it has built-in programs, but the 30-minute program sure does kick my ass. Do 10 minutes of standing stretch. I like stretching more than I would have thought possible. After 30 minutes of exercising and 10 minutes of stretching I’m done exercising for the day. I’m always wiped out easily on Mondays, probably because I spend almost an hour bending and stretching while I clean kitty cages out at the petstore, not to mention chasing around the kitties who have no desire to go back in their cage.
10:10 – 11:05 am: Eat breakfast (I prefer to eat breakfast pretty late in the morning):
A A Blueberry muffin and two clementines.
Check email, read blogs, email a few times with
Nance. From the computer room, I can hear the Bean in the living room, smacking at the blinds with his paw. He does it long enough that it begins to annoy me, so I grab him and push him through the cat door into the back yard. Little pain in the ass Bean.
11:05 – 11:15 am: Empty dishwasher, put dirty dishes from sink into dishwasher, wipe down counters. Think about mopping the floor, but decide not to.
11:15 – 11:25 am: The bird feeders are empty. Grab container of bird seed, go outside. Spot’s sitting outside and gives me a guilty look. Miz Poo comes out to supervise while I fill the platform feeders and rinse out and refill the bird bath.
11:25 – 12:10ish: Go upstairs. Take shower. Sit in chair in the corner of the bedroom and read. Miz Poo jumps up on my lap and kneads and kneads and kneads before deciding she doesn’t want to sit in my lap, and jumps down to put the smack down on the Bean.
12:10: Go downstairs, check email, try to clear a few things off my desk before giving up.
12:10 – 1:00 pm: Vacuum entire downstairs. The only cat who’ll let the vacuum cleaner get within two feet of him is the Bean. The other cats are terrified. Once the downstairs is vacuumed, I vacuum the stairs, which I hate to do. Wish for the millionth time that our stairs were hardwooded.
The Bean keeps an eye on the vacuum.
Pancit.
1:00 – 1:25 pm: Make lunch – pancit (without the rice sticks, as rice sticks are calorie-intensive and I’m not a noodle/ pasta kinda gal for the most part). I have enough left over for two lunches (I made a smaller batch than the recipe). Basically pancit is a lean pork/ cabbage/ carrot/ onion/ teriyaki sauce stir-fry, and I’m absolutely addicted to it. Also, all those veggies are good for you! (I also had a banana and a white chocolate and raspberry yogurt, but forgot to snap a picture).
1:25 – 2:30 pm: Eat lunch, push the Bean out the cat door 45 times, think about beating the Bean, read journals (I’m almost all caught up!), respond to a couple of emails (it being my goal to be completely caught up before the month is over), talk to Fred on the phone a couple of times.
2:30 – 3:30ish pm: Watch
The Ellen Degeneres Show, which I DVR’d earlier. Work on cross-stitching a truly hideous Christmas ornament (I was almost completely caught up with all the Christmas ornament kits I had, and my sister gave me a thousand (well, practically) for Christmas, so I’ll probably be working on those for the rest of the year!). Roseanne Barr is on Ellen, and she’s funny as hell. When that’s over, watch part of Dr. Phil.
3:37 pm: Have following discussion with the spud:
Spud: What would make someone throw up if they aren’t sick?
Me: If they saw something gross, maybe?
Spud: No, not that, either.
Me: Well then, I don’t know. Why?
Spud: Because I threw up today.
Me: Where? In class?
Spud: Yes, in class at my desk.
Me: And they didn’t send you home?
Spud: No.
Me: They just cleaned it up and kept going with class?
Spud: No, there was nothing to clean up.
Me: There was nothing to clean up?
Spud: No.
Me: Well, then it doesn’t really sound like you threw up.
Spud: Flouncing off, sighing.
Me: Killing spud, burying her in the backyard.
3:45 pm: Fred arrives home. I wait at the door to greet him and throw my arms wide, yelling “Give me some sugar!” He always looks so stressed out that I want to make him smile. Why, yes. I CAN
take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worth-while.
3:50 – 4:10ish pm: Lay on the bed and discuss Fred’s day with him. He gets up and goes downstairs to get something to drink, then comes back up and settles in to do some writing. We moved a table into the bedroom and set it up so that he can sit in there and write without distraction. He was sitting in the recliner in the corner of the room on the other side of the bed:
but sitting like that with the laptop on his lap was uncomfortable, so voila! We found a solution.
4:10 – 4:15 pm: Lay on bed while he writes. Distract him. Blow him a kiss and go back downstairs.
4:15 – 5:ish pm: Make dinner. Check email, read blogs.
5:ish – 5:20 pm: Eat dinner – a barbecued chicken breast, corn, and a salad. Discuss various and sundry things with Fred and the spud.
(I forgot to take a picture of the food. This is the aftermath)
5:20 – 5:40 pm: Go upstairs with Fred. Discuss what he’s writing. Discuss possible revisions. Distract him while he starts to write. Blow him a kiss and go back downstairs.
5:40 pm – 7 pm: Read email, read blogs, think about clearing the mess off my desk. Snuggle with Miz Poo. Go into the living room and read for a while.
7:00 – 8:00 pm: Flip channels. Eat snack (yogurt and a string cheese). Fred wants to watch
Fear Factor, so I read while he watches it. When the eating-gross-stuff part comes on, I tell him he either needs to change the channel, or I’ll go into the other room until that part is over. He flips channels, and we end up watching a Discovery Health show about a woman having weight loss surgery. We flip back and forth between
Fear Factor, Discovery Health channel, and a VH-1 show about The Rock.
8:00 – 8:55 pm: There’s absolutely nothing on TV that we want to watch, so Fred puts in the
Andrew Lloyd Webber Royal Albert Hall Celebration DVD with the idea that we’ll listen to it while we read. But I didn’t get enough sleep the night before and am easily distracted, so I put down my book and lay down on the couch to watch. I insist Fred forward to “Those cute New Zealand boys” (Boyzone, singing “No Matter What”), and then we watch a few more songs until my favorite – Michael Ball singing Gesthemane – comes on. Fred chatters through it until I give him a shut
the fuck up, please look.
8:55 pm: We go upstairs and get ready for bed. Fred gives the cats their nightly treat (kitten chow).
9:00 – 9:40 pm: Lay in bed and talk about various and sundry things. Kiss for a few minutes, and then Fred wanders off to his room.
9:45 pm: Ordinarily, I’d turn the light back on and read, but I’m sleepy, so I leave the light off, snuggle with Miz Poo, and drift off to sleep.
]]>