A Day in the Life - 4.28.12

In February I did a day in the life to document my working day. I thought it might be fun to do again, but this time I thought I'd show you what a weekend day might look like. Plus, I was encouraged by a blog post by Navigating the Mothership who does these quarterly.

1:20 - I wake up from a dream where I am a black woman who works as a judge. Jesse is still my husband and Riley is still my daughter. I am being attacked and I use a taser and knives to protect myself. Jesse comes to my defense just when I wake and need to go to the bathroom. I still feel the jaw pain that started shortly after dinner last night. I didn't hit it, or lay on it wrong. It just came out of the blue. I've been sleeping for the last few hours on my right side as it's the left side of my jaw that hurts. Usually, after a middle of the night bathroom break, I 'flip' sides when getting back into bed, but I stick to my right side this time.

4:04 - I wake again and go to the bathroom. Sadly, this is the norm. I drink a lot of water and just can't make it through the night.

5:50 something - wake up. *sigh* Turns out I have to go to the bathroom already. Wasn't I just up? However, I don't dare get up since any little noise at this time is likely to wake Riley who sleeps right across the hallway... and going to the bathroom is a big 'no' since it is between our rooms and risks making too much noise. I decide I will fall back to sleep. I have to. I came to bed a little later than usual last night and I am tired. Sleep, I welcome you.

6:48 - I give up. After tossing and turning, needing to pee, jaw still hurting and thinking about how I need to Google "jaw pain with sore throat", and a cat crawling all over me and laying directly on my bladder I decide to get up.

I am ok with Riley getting up at this time as she usually wakes up around 6:15 so I go to the bathroom, but decide not to push a good thing so I skip flushing. Note to self: remember to flush toilet when she wakes up. I take the following picture in the bathroom, but between the window light and the little orange light on the camera I cannot bring myself to open my eyes no matter how hard I try.

I go downstairs, take a vitamin, fix myself some Citrocel (yup, I'm that person), and head towards my computer. About 10 minutes after I am out of bed I hear my kid stirring. I go up to her room and find that not only did she pee a lot last night, but she pooped pretty good. I change her diaper, put on new pants since she leaked a little, and remove her sheets.

When I took the sheets off she insisted on playing in her crib.

She keeps saying "daddy, where are you?" so I take her into our bedroom where Jesse is still in bed. Riley decides she wants "food to eat" so I take her downstairs where she feeds the cat and then grubs on french toast and grapes for breakfast while I clean up the kitchen.

While she's still eating Jesse comes downstairs and eats with her. I take the opportunity to finish cleaning up the kitchen and to start the laundry. After eating Jesse lets Riley watch some ABC videos on his computer and then takes her into the basement to play while I start this post and eat breakfast.

Eating daddy's breakfast is so much better than eating my own.

8:15ish - Realize I have a haircut scheduled at 9 am so I head upstairs to get dressed. I come downstairs realizing I forgot to grab socks, and I forgot to flush the toilet. Note to self again: Flush toilet! I finally Google  "jaw pain with sore throat" and kinda wish I hadn't:

Results: Causes of Jaw pain AND Sore throat

1. Angina
 A special type of chest pain....read more »
2. Heart attack
 Serious and often fatal acute heart condition...read more »
3. Oropharyngeal cancer, adult
 Cancer of the back of the mouth which forms part of the throat including the back of the tongue, tonsils, part of the throat wall and soft palate (oropharynx)....read more »
4. Quinsy
 Tonsil abscess...read more »
5. Shingles
 Infectious viral infection occuring years after chickenpox infection....read more »
6. Sinusitis
 Sinusitis is an inflammation of the paranasal sinuses....read more »
7. Tetanus
 A disease caused by chemicals which are produced by a bacterium (clostridium tetani) and are toxic to the nerves. The infection usually occurs when the bacteria enter the body through a deep wound - these bacteria are anaerobic and hence don't need oxygen...read more »

I have TMJ and I know this pain is different so I now start to wonder if I am having a heart attack or if I have shingles. I hope I make it through the day.

8:38 - After doing some more laundry, remembering to flush the toilet (!) and saying goodbye to the husband and kid I head off to Salon Stella to get my haircut.

On the way I try to find something worthwhile to listen to on the radio, but not even the Current is playing a song I like. I give up after I hear someone making fun of rape on KQRS. I see that I have one CD compilation I made years ago which I've dubbed "Rocker Chicks". I listen to the likes of Sam Phillips, Lori Carson, and others. While at the salon I listen to another woman talk about her dating experiences and how there are so many "Uncle Festers" out there. I am not sure what she means, but suspect I may be married to one... at least the bald headed part. She goes on to talk about the new dog she will be getting soon and that she's decided this dog needs a first and a middle name as her last couple dogs have too. I now wonder if my cats feel incomplete with only having first names and all...

10:00 - Haircut done.

Before and After. It may not look like much of a change, but it feels soooo much lighter. And, are my glasses always crooked like this? Good thing I hope to get new ones soon.

Head home and make a mental note as I pass Broadway Pizza to bring Riley there one day just to be able to sit in the caboose dining area. I get home and notice that Riley is in front of the TV with a Nuk. I don't like this scene, but I also understand when Jesse says she had been fussy.

When she saw me with my camera she ran and grabbed hers as well.

While I was gone they went to pick up a few things at Home Depot. Jesse started lunch for Riley so I finish that, and do some more laundry. I jump in the shower because I feel that one little hair from my haircut that keeps poking into my back. After Riley finishes eating I show her a new writing app I downloaded on the iPad, but it might be slightly too advanced for her (we want one where she can practice writing letters with her fingers). While she plays with the iPad I go upstairs and remake her bed to ready her for her nap. I come back down and eat some of her leftover Mac and Cheese which hurts my jaw.

12:15 -  Riley comes upstairs with me and we read a couple books before I lay her down at 12:30. I head back downstairs and mail off some information about Pacemakers to my dad. He's having one put in this coming Friday and was concerned about what he couldn't do once he has one. God forbid my 84 year old dad could no longer use one of his 4 gas chain saws. The doctors gave him a list, but he wanted to hear from real people so earlier in the week I posted something on www.pacemakersclub.com and got a good number of responses. I don't mean to be cheesy, but based on the responses I received those people have big hearts.

I decide to make pico de gallo since we have a bag of tortilla chips. Perhaps not the best idea since crunchier items make my jaw hurt more, but I don't care because I am hungry.

I follow this up with an apple because I want to eat something even more painful than the tortilla chips, apparently. I watch an episode of Friday Night Lights while doing all of this as it came highly recommended. I'm halfway through season one and think it's a'right, but I'm not totally sold.

1:00 - Take a Photo a Day picture since the prompt today is 1pm. Then I just hang out writing this post and get some things together for Riley since she is going to spend the night at grandma and grandpa's house.

2:40 - Riley wakes up and, of course, wants "food to eat". I love how she says it that way... just likes she asks for "books to read". After snacking we play and get ready for grandma to arrive.

After playing on the bed I do more laundry and clean the kitchen. Again.

4:00 - Grandma shows up and plays with Riley before taking her overnight. Riley started fussing so I made grandma hide so Riley could find her. Below grandma is trying to get Riley to hide, but Riley just copies grandma by covering her own face and counting. Obviously, she doesn't quite get the hide and seek concept.

After hide and seek it's time for running around the table. This is a favorite past time of our kiddo. I'm pretty sure we are going to wear a path in the carpet.

Grandpa and grandpa are taking Riley overnight so we can go to our rental property in the morning and do some maintenance type stuff. It was more than we were expecting, but are grateful to have some one on one time. We have a big night of dinner (out) and movie (in) planned.

4:45 - We head off to The Loop for dinner. I have a craving for fish and want to eat something softer since the jaw still hurts. My husband loves their steak and potatoes salad. First thing my husband does when we get there is text his mom. What a daddy.

Aren't we cute sitting right next to each other in this big booth.

7:00 - On the way home we pick up some wine and arrive home with full bellies. Delighted with my dinner and ready to settle in to watch Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol with my honey. I attempt to take a picture of us watching the movie, but don't care for how the first picture turns out:

I decide to give it another try:

I give up, because... how can I top this. Plus, I am crying from laughing so hard. I married a nut.

9:15 - Done with movie. I give it two thumbs up. We both check our computers one last time and head upstairs to read before bed. I make it to 9:40 and decide I've had enough.  Off to sleep I go. Glorious (no toddler in the house) sleep.

PS... I wake the next day with jaw pain, but am alive and feeling better! Must just be some weird one-off thing.

Happy Anniversary to us

Six and a half years ago I was talked into joining Match.com after some nudging from a friend. I was only on there a week when Jesse 'winked' at me and a week later (after some sorta last minute planning) we were on our first date. We had a comfortable dinner at French Meadow Bakery and Cafe (beside the blinding sun that glared off the white house across the street), followed by a walk around lake Calhoun and tea at The Tea Garden. After power dating for 2 weeks (6 dates with 5 different guys) I felt relieved to go on a date with a seemingly normal guy. One of my rules was to not get into the car of one of these dates on the first date, but I even broke that with Jesse. Earlier in the week I went on a date with a different guy who tried to go in for a kiss at the end of the date. One of my other rules was to not kiss on the first date and I let him know so. I thought he would respect that, but then came in for another try. *sigh*. 'No' means 'no', buddy. At the end of my date with Jesse he didn't even try to kiss me. It came across as gentlemanly instead of disinterested. Later a friend asked what I would have done if Jesse had gone in for the kiss. I had to admit I totally would have let him. Needless to say I walked away from the date hopeful and couldn't wait to see him again.


Fast forward to Saturday, 4/21 - our three year wedding anniversary. We decided that we wanted to replicate our first date by eating at French Meadow Cafe and walking around Lake Calhoun, only this time we would have our 2 year old daughter with us. Since there was to be rain that day we decided to go to the lake earlier in the day. And instead of walk around the lake we took Riley to the toddler playground where an older girl followed her around the whole time wanting to play. It was a bit chillier than we cared for and after seeing Riley shiver a number of times we headed home. Luckily we left when we did as the rain came about a minute after we got into the car.

Nature is cool.

Riley's stalker, er, I mean, new friend from the park. As Riley walked away from the duck she said "bye duck" and then blew him a kiss. *heart melting*

After Riley's nap we headed out to French Meadow Bakery and Cafe where we had a delicious and mellow dinner.

This child is obsessed with her ABC's. I can't wait until she can start writing them so she stops making us do so all the time.

I had the seared tilapia which was wonderful even with rice that was on the crunchy side. 

Coloring and ABC's was no longer cutting it so we had to pull out the iPad for Riley. I think she uses it more than I do. We shared the fruit crisp. It was okay, and I might have liked it more if it hadn't had rhubarb in it. Yuck.

The offending white house from 6+ years ago.

The night ended with us watching a mediocre movie, ...and, of course, a kiss from my honey. I can't wait to do this many times over.

April Photo a Day - Week 3

April Photo a Day inspired by Fat Mum Slim

4/15

Sunset

Rain kept me from getting a good sunset picture, but this was taken at the official time of sunset. I took a bunch of pictures that showed the trees and sky clearly, but I liked the blurred view taken through this wet window screen. It felt like a better reflection of the weather.

4/16

Flower

It's been pretty nice weather here in MN... flowers blooming early... dandelions popping up all over my yard. Until this day, which started with snow and rain. Even the dandelions wanted nothing to do with it and shriveled up. Riley just got this pinwheel flower the day before at a baby shower so it seemed like a nice substitute.

4/17

Something you don't like

I'm sure there are things that I don't like, but the only 'for sure' thing that I could think of  this day was centipedes. Ugh, they give me the heebee jeebees. Lucky for me I didn't actually see any so I had to find something else. We have a house that was built in the '40's and has wonderful glass door knobs... except on a couple doors. People who used to rent the house replaced them with ugly bronze knobs with locks. I recently took the knobs off as Riley knows how to lock them (trouble ahead!). I'd like to put the glass knobs back on, but now the holes are too big. Now I have to make the decision to either get new doors to use with the old glass knobs or just find some other door knobs. In the meantime they look like this. At least my kid won't end up locking herself in one of these rooms.

4/18

Hair

Riley has fine, wispy, very blond hair. She obviously did not get this from me. It's gotten a little long and has a bit of a mullet shape so we are planning a haircut soon (done - read about it here). I'm a little torn about getting it cut, but it's probably time to get it cleaned up.

4/19

Orange

This is my Built brand bag I use to haul my food and stuff to work. I'd recommend checking these bags out as they are pretty awesome.

4/20

Something you drew

I'm not much of an artist as you can tell, but I sure pumped out a lot of one eyed women in the late '80's. Apparently, I couldn't make two eyes that looked normal so I did the bangs over one eye thing. This beauty came from 1988.

4/21

Bottle

Or bottles... as you can see we have a plethora of water bottles... most of which I don't use anymore. And to top it off I won another one at work the day before I took this picture.

See April Photo a Day week 1, and 2.

First Haircut

Not to brag... but my kid is a superstar. We finally took Riley in for her first haircut. Kiddo has super fine, thin hair so I was reluctant to do so, but the long mullet look had to go. I wasn't quite sure how she'd handle a stranger messing with her hair so I wasn't sure how this would all turn out. I figured she wouldn't cry, but I was worried that she wouldn't have the patience and tolerance for everything that goes into a haircut. Perhaps a little whining would be involved. Turns out she acted like she didn't have a care in the world... like she gets her hair cut all the time. No big deal, mom.

The before: Long, wispy hair down her back.

The after: Mullet gone. 

Of course, it didn't hurt that she could watch Sesame Street from her seat. Above? She's looking at the TV right next to me. The kid in the back? Screaming his head off.

Such a super trooper. She might look upset here, but I caught her when she was finally talking. 

And in the end the most exciting part to her was when she convinced her daddy to let her have a sucker over the sticker. She made both her mommy and daddy very proud of her today. Way to go, kiddo.

Sucker

Riley's at that age where she is so observant of everything we do... and she wants to do it too. We hear her say "I do it" on a regular basis. She watches us so much that I really need to be more mindful of the things I do and the things I say. I know there are some things that we can't hide forever like my husband's and my bad habit of cleaning our ears with Q-tips. I don't look forward to her seeing that one and attempting it... and us trying to explain why she can't do it (but that mommy and daddy can, of course).

So lately when I put on my mascara Riley wants to as well. She'll ask me for "sucker" (which took me a bit to figure out what she was referring too - it's how she says 'mascara'). I just happen to have two mascara tubes so I can hand her one while I'm still working on mine. Luckily, she hasn't figured out the key to putting mascara on is that you need to take the cap off... and hopefully, once she does, she'll understand that we won't let her actually wear it for a long, long time.

As you can see her technique is a little off as she insists on stabbing herself in the eye.

I can't help but cherish this time with her and know that it won't last forever. She seems to be growing up in leaps and bounds and I know that before long we could be fighting about me not letting her wear makeup yet, who she dates, what grades she gets, and a ton of other issues. I love that right now she sees what we do as things to strive for doing herself, and that she is able to do more and more on her own. But I also don't want her to grow up too fast. And I can dream that hopefully, she will always look up to us and want to be like mommy and daddy, right?

Book Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein Books by Dean Koontz
I haven't written about books in a bit, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been reading. In fact, I just got through the Frankenstein  series by Dean Koontz. This isn't the typical type of book I would read, but Dean Koontz was recommended to me, I needed a book, and this series was on our work bookshelf.

I have to admit it was really, really hard to get into this series especially since I had just finished One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd, but I was determined to give it a try. The series includes:

Frankenstein Book 1: Prodigal Son

Frankenstein Book 2: City of Night

Frankenstein Book 3: Dead and Alive

Frankenstein Book 4: Lost Souls

Frankenstein Book 5: The Dead Town

If you asked me to rate this series after reading book one my rating would have been low. Again, I just read a completely different style of book and this was hard to adjust to. Plus the writing felt sorta formulaic. You can tell this guy churns out the books, but after the first book I determined I would give one more book a try and then give up if it wasn't any better.

Turns out I liked book two a little better. Oh, it still felt like formula writing, some of the story line was a bit cheesy, and it was pretty graphic which could sometimes be scary. In fact, I refused to read any of these right before bed since I have quite the overactive imagination... especially when it's dark. But the thing was the characters started to grow on me and as I proceeded though the end of book five I found myself liking this series mostly because it was really funny. Yes, funny. Koontz does a great job of putting humor in where other authors would have neglected to do so. I mean, this is supposed to be scary stuff folks!

If you would have asked me to rate it early on I would have given it a grade of a C, but the story line was sort of unique and the colorful (humorous) characters won me over. Sure this is no 'classic', but for what it is I'll give it a grade of a B.


Books read since the beginning of 2012:12

April Photo a Day - Week 2

April Photo a Day inspired by Fat Mum Slim

4/8

Inside your wallet

It may look like I have a lot of credit cards, but those are likely punch cards from various restaurants downtown. Or Starbucks gift cards. My company liked to give those out for awhile so I have several, but I'm not a coffee drinker. I know they have other things than coffee, but I never think to go there. Note to self...

4/9

Younger you

My brother drew this picture of me years ago. The original photo came from 1985 and as you can see he took a few liberties with the drawing when he removed my braces and apparently plucked my eyebrows. This drawing was in the earlier days of my brother's talent and if you saw his more recent work you would be awed by the difference. My brother passed away a few years ago so drawings like this are pretty precious to me.

4/10

Cold

It was a cold day so I was tempted to take a picture outside, but that would have meant I would have had to go outdoors and I was cold enough as it was. I decided to take a picture of the inside of the fridge because... well, it's cold in there too. Apparently, Riley is trying to steal my Picture a Day idea.

4/11

Where you ate breakfast

Usually I eat breakfast at the table with my kid, but she and my husband finished eating before I got around to it. For many years there wasn't really any reason for me to have a dining room table because this was where I would eat. This, or the couch. I know, not a great habit, but now that we have a kid the table gets a lot more usage.

4/12

Stairs

I sooooo want a do over for this day. I had a plan to take a very different picture. This was the day I went to the Twin's game so I was going to take a picture of the stadium steps, but only remembered once we were driving away from the stadium. *sigh* So sad. I came home and snapped off a few pictures of both indoor stairs and decided to go with this one even though I think it looks so cold... and almost not like my house. This is not the feeling I get when I go up these stairs. Oh well.

4/13

Something you found

When I arrived at work this day I found this word find puzzle at my desk. It's just one of the many things my company provides to help lighten up the crazy times of the quarter. Usually things like this go untouched because I'm so busy, but this day provided me with a number of breathers that allowed me to finish this.

4/14

How you feel today

So I took a number of pictures of myself hoping to capture that "today's another day... a good day, nothing great, but nothing bad" emotion and this was the closest I got. The other pictures? Well, they made me look sad or scared. Apparently, I don't have a good feel on the facial emotions I am expressing. Clearly, I'd never make it as a convincing actress. 

See April Photo a Day week 1 and 3.