Day in the life - Fall 2013 - Work Day Edition

I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to document a work day or a weekend for this fall edition of Day in the Life hosted by Navigating the Mothership. In the end, I decided to do both which was a lot more exhausting than I thought it would be and I'll probably never do two days in a row again, but I'm glad that I did it now that it's behind me.

Monday, October 14th, 2013


Riley is 3 years, 8 months


1:47 - I wake because Riley whines out. Not sure why, but it's an off and on whine. I think it's over and then she starts again. I almost wish she'd just cry and I could justify checking on her. After awhile her whining seems to stop so I get up, go to the bathroom and get back into bed. I toss and turn for awhile hoping to fall asleep when Riley starts whining again. I decide to just get up and check in on her. She's on top of her green comfort blanket so I pull that out and cover her with her comforter as it is a little cool in her room. I don't hear another peep from her.

5:27 - Get up, bathroom, go back to bed and hope that I fall back asleep.

6:28 - Yes! I fell back asleep and slept until almost 6:30. When I worked in the office I had to set an alarm to get up at 6 am to get out the door just before 7 am and to work by 7:30 am.

I actually would have slept longer but I hear Riley from her room. I go in there and she complains that "pee is coming out of my butt". I feel the bed and it is dry so I rush her to the potty. She pees and tells me she did 6 pees. Ok. When I pull her jammie pants up they are wet in the butt area. Now it makes sense. Clean her up and get her dressed before heading downstairs. (I'm sure when she's older she's going to love that I documented this.) We used to always get dressed before heading down, but now that we don't have to rush out the door we often go downstairs in our jammies, eat breakfast and then change.

We head downstairs where Jesse is making his morning oatmeal. Riley wants Jesse to play cars with her and provides an argument as to how Jesse can eat his breakfast and play with her. She's rather convincing with her rationales these days.

I feed the cats, drink my morning citrocel, and start Riley's lunch. Also a big change for us since her daycare always provided the food. We can pay extra at her preschool for a school lunch, but we haven't done so yet. She's a bit of a picky eater so I have been reluctant based on what they offer, but maybe that's just what I need to do to get her to eat different items. So far her teachers have told us she's a really good eater, but as long as she has her regular items she is ok. I make her a soynut butter and banana sandwich - her current favorite.

I then make Riley breakfast and hop in the shower. When I worked in the office I always had to shower at night as it just didn't fit into the morning. It's nice that I can now shower in the morning... or heck, even over lunch if I wanted to (which is what I did the next day since I went to a morning yoga class and didn't have time to shower when I got home).

7:15 - While I'm in the shower Jesse comes in to say goodbye. He's decided to walk to work today. He often drops Riley off at school on his way to work unless he walks or bikes to his work which is about two and a half miles away.

I get out of the shower and get dressed while Riley plays. One of the joys of working at home is being able to wear whatever I want, and I want to be comfortable. Sometimes I wear what I would have worn in the office, but only the most comfortable outfits. This day I wear yoga pants and a super comfy t-shirt and a light pull over. At some point during the day I add a light fleece to keep me warm. Oh, and I am barefoot as long as I am in the house. (Update: I may be rethinking this barefoot thing as two days later I found cat poop on the rug in my home office.) Also, I always put on my wedding ring and my necklace that has Riley's name and birth date. Make up and earrings are no longer attended to, but will make their appearance on the weekends.

7:45 - We finish getting ready and head out to school just before 8 am.

8:03 - We arrive at school and put Riley's coat and backpack in her locker. I drop off her lunch in the lunch bucket and say my goodbyes. We were having some issues with this recently, but today is a good day.

I head home and eye the new frozen yogurt place thinking about when I can justify going back. It's sooooo good, but soooo dangerous because it is within walking distance. My health conscious husband cannot seem to say 'no' to this either and even brought me some home the next day as a reward for going to yoga in the morning. It was super sweet of him, but I'm fairly certain he just wanted an excuse to get some for himself.

Prime company parking

8:10 - I get home and do some dishes before I have to start work at 8:30. Working from home also came with a new schedule where I work 36 hours a week instead of 40 so 4 days a week I start an hour later than I did before. Since I no longer have my morning bus ride to prepare for the day I appreciate this time I have alone. Unfortunately, I never use it to read like I did on the bus. Instead, I do glamorous things like dishes, laundry, and cleaning the cat box.

8:17 - I head downstairs and set up my computer so I am ready to go at 8:30.

Giraffe doesn't creep me out as much as I expected it to since it's staring at me all day long.

The cats snuggle in right outside my work door. I am pretty sure they spent their days on our bed upstairs until I started working at home. There was some adjustment on their behalf in understanding that they could not come in my office. I have glass french doors that lead into my office so they can sit and stare at me all day as well... especially when they are hungry.  Jesse bought this new cat bed and they have been planted there ever since.

8:30 - I start working. I basically field calls, emails, cases, and work on a variety of projects.

9:30 - Time for a snack. I eat a little yogurt, then apple slices, and finally crackers with cheese and salami. Apparently, I'm hungry this morning - my usual is apple slices and cheese. And I drink lots of water.

12:20 - Lunch time! I was scheduled to go to lunch at noon today, but got caught on the phone. I go on walk and then eat lunch.

I walk a few blocks through the neighborhood to get to a nearby park with a pond. I still miss being able to walk around the river when I lived in NE Minneapolis, but this works too. It's a quieter than usual walk as I hardly see anyone out, but I guess that's what happens when the temperatures drop.

When I get back from my walk I don't have a ton of time to make food so I start pulling out leftovers and this is the sad lunch I came up with. Whatever, it filled the belly.

1:20 - Back to work. Phone, email, cases, projects...

1:50 - Whoa, the internet goes out! First glitch of this kind while working from home. I have to manage this one on my own since my tech support (husband) is at work and left his phone at home. I go upstairs and monkey with the router and then click on a button that I clicked on while downstairs and now we are back in action. I have to admit I was hoping a little bit that I was about to have a forced short work day. Oh well, back to work. Internet was only out for about 15 minutes

2:10 - Husband comes home from work.Yes, this is his regular time he gets home. Yes, I am jealous of his hours. Hubby works approximately 7 or 8 - 2 (or less). Lucky guy.

2:25 - Jesse comes downstairs and plays a video game with his headphones on in the next room. I can't hear him, he can't hear me. All I can hear is some weird tapping off and on all day. I can't identify the place it's coming from, but think it might be happening when the heat is on. Must investigate more or it will drive me nuts.

3:30 - Jesse leaves to go get Riley. He usually keeps her outside to play or runs errands with her so they don't make noise inside while I am working, although there are days she plays quietly upstairs. Today they go to the store.

3:45 - I audibly swear at my computer - something that I couldn't really do when I worked in the corporate office. I've just written a long, detailed email when my system times out and I have to start over. Gah!

4:28 - Jesse and Riley come home and I hear her yell "mommy" as soon as she gets in the door. Luckily, I'm not on a call. I log out a couple minutes later and take a few minutes to myself to regroup. I no longer have a bus ride to decompress so I need at least a few minutes. It's a little hard to go from intense work mode to intense mommy/wife mode.

While I was good about taking a walk, I didn't do much for stretching during the day (besides a shoulder roll or two). I decide to see if I can find yoga music on Pandora (yes, Yoga Radio) and do a few PT stretches and throw in some yoga moves - which really overlap anyway.  I should head upstairs, but since Jesse just started doing yoga it occurred to me that it would be nice to print out something with common yoga poses (after our class last week - between him being new and me semi new, there were a few moments we were lost). I look them up and realize I'm not set up to print at this computer so I will have to finish this task later.

4:45 - I go upstairs and find Riley with a new doll. Husband with all the buying! I told him we are sticking with four Christmas gifts this year for Riley (want, need, wear, read) and he rolled his eyes at me.

I ask Riley about school and she tells me she didn't cry and that it was good, but then clearly tells me she doesn't want to talk about school. I may ask her a lot of questions about what she did at school and she may get a little tired of me asking.

I make dinner: chicken sausage, the rice I made last night and green beans. Riley complains about her tummy all through dinner. I try to convince her to drink some Citrocel after about 5 fruitless trips to the bathroom. She declines, but takes a Pepto Bismal tablet and by bedtime she no longer complains about her tummy.

After dinner, Jesse's buddy Tom makes a surprise visit - "that's daddy's friend that used to come over". While here he and Riley try to build a castle around the Lucy the cat. She is remarkably tolerant of this, but moves before the castle is finished. Tom is clearly more upset about this than Riley. Then we go outside to watch Tom check out Jesse's bike.

6:30 - After Tom leaves we start to wind down. I start a bath for Riley while Jesse gets ready to go to a yoga class. Riley sees the tennis ball I use for some of my physical therapy exercises and she asks if she can use it. Apparently, she's seen me do this enough because she does it exactly like I do. Amazing what these kids pick up on.


Riley takes a bath, goes upstairs, gets her bear jammies on (she's really into picking them herself these days). We read books. Or actually, she reads me three books (because she likes to do all the reading now - not that she can really read, but she's memorized a fair amount of these books) and we do our new bedtime ritual where I rub her back and then she determines the number of hugs and then kisses she wants from me. We've come a long way from just a few months ago when she was having huge meltdowns at bedtime.

Riley grabs my hand and folds over some fingers and then says "I love you". Hey, she's made the "I love you" sign with my hand. Huh, they must have taught her that it school.  But, you know, she never wants to talk about school so I wouldn't really know - it's like she's 14 or something.

7:35 - I go back downstairs. Jesse already left for a yoga class. I have a hard time going to one of these night classes as I can't imagine working out until 8:30. Plus, it would mean that I wouldn't be doing Riley's bedtime ritual and that's sort of my thing. Except for one night a week (in which I work until 8 pm) I always put Riley to bed.

I work on this post while watching sitcoms that I don't really care for. I should have just listened to some music.

8:30 - Jesse is home and he notices that he is 200 hundred steps from getting a 15,000 step fitbit badge for the day. I tell him the 200 steps is nothing, but then try to convince him to walk over to the new frozen yogurt place. I see that he seriously considers this, but then doesn't follow up on it. The one time he doesn't bite at this suggestion. Darn.

Jesse goes downstairs to play a video game while I eat a bowl of cereal. I finish up my previous post and start on this one.

9:30 - I go upstairs and turn out Riley's light. I want to phase her out of the 'falling to sleep with the light on', but have decided not to push it yet. She's going to bed peacefully right now and I'd rather not mess with that.

I go into my room and check my fitbit pedometer. I see that I did drastically better than other days I work from home (on days I don't drop off Riley or go for a walk I get around 2500 steps - bad, very bad), but it's still not the 10,000 recommended in a day. 

10:00 - In bed. I fall asleep pretty hard and fast and don't even notice when Jesse gets into bed.