Monday {Week in the Life}

I’ve been wanting to do a bit more writing and journaling lately.  Concurrently, I’ve been wanting to share a “day in the life” – but realized that a week would provide a more accurate record of everything that I encounter on a regular basis. Fortunately for me, I saw that this week Ali Edwards is holding her Week in the Life event – perfect timing!  Let’s see if I can keep up with this all week.

6:30 am   My alarm goes off and I barely wake up enough to turn it off.  A little while later I wake up and write a short blog post, but I’m all out of coffee. My morning is out of whack from that alone.  I’ll have to stop by Caffè Amouri on the way to work, because I absolutely can’t start the day without a tasty caffeine jolt.

The weather sure is disappointing.  It’s cold and rainy all of a sudden.  I suppose it’s typical for April, but it’s tough when it’s following on the heels of balmy February and March weather.

The workday is typical for April – crazy busy. I sit in my cubicle working hard. . . attend a few meetings . . .  dart to the craft store at lunch to grab a few fake flowers that I’ll experiment with later this week. I don’t have time to dawdle; there’s so much to be done at work and my blackberry doesn’t stop buzzing the whole 20 minutes I’m out of the office.   I grab a ham and cheese croissant from the French bakery next door.  The warm and flaky goodness is perfect for this cold and rainy day.

6:30 pm – Stop at the store on the way home from work. We’re desperately in need of groceries, and have a feeling Ryan would not consider frozen veggies and vegan “sausage” an acceptable dinner.

7:30 pm – Because my night won’t be busy enough, apparently, I decide I should clean out the fridge and make pizza for dinner. I take a shortcut by grabbing a thin-crust frozen pizza, then topping it with piles of fresh spinach, mushrooms, olives, cheese and pepperoni.

I pump up the volume on my latest British chick-lit audio book because Ryan has chosen this time to vacuum. And in true Jane fashion, as soon as the vacuum is away, I spill coffee grounds all over the kitchen floor. And drop a hunk of tofu, promptly stepping in it and mashing it into my slipper. Whoops.

Yes, this is a typical day in the life.

While the pizza is baking, I manage to clean the whole kitchen, clean out the fridge, and marinate two pork tenderloins for later in the week. I switch the pizza to “broil” to crisp up the pepperoni slices, but as I open the oven door to check the pizza, the smoke alarm goes off again and again.  I put the dogs outside for the sake of their sanity.

After a few minutes it’s time to slip the pizza out of the oven and chow down!  But suddenly my headphone cord catches on a drawer handle, ripping the headphones off my head and sending my phone crashing to the ground.

I scramble to put my phone back together, thinking “don’t let me have broken another phone. . . I really don’t want to replace it yet. . . ”   just as I notice smoke coming from the oven. “Sh*t, the pizza is burning!”

Grabbing the pizza from the oven, I see that only the edges of the crust are burnt. But then the smoke alarms – all THREE of them – start wailing for the THIRD time. The poor dogs are cowering in the back of the yard, behind the shed.

Yes, this is a typical day in the life.

8:00 pm – Dinner. The pizza rocks. So do my pepperoni, spinach, olive, and cheese-stuffed mushroom caps, which I’m experimenting with as a low-carb pizza alternative for future dinners.  Finish watching Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield as we eat.

I carry my dishes to the kitchen after dinner, and wonder to myself how on earth the kitchen could be such a mess again – already – when I completely cleaned it up before cooking dinner.

8:30 pm – Check on Janery, my Etsy shop and answer customer inquiries.  Check regular emails, realize I have about 100 to respond to, and give up.   I’ve got to finish assembling wedding invitations.

And then all evening I fight with the invites. They’re not turning out as I hoped, but maybe that’s because I’ve seen far too many picture-perfect invite packages featured on wedding blogs.  I am pretty sure I should have coughed up the dough to just order everything from Minted, rather than just ordering the invite cards and attempting to DIY the rest.

Psst: Can you guess which invites we chose?

11:00 pm Ryan wanders down to see what all my whining is about. I put him to work licking envelopes and cutting strips of burlap ribbon.  I usually like working alone, but at this point I’m grateful for the company.   We watch Zoey Deschanel in New Girl while we work. . . and several times Ryan dies laughing, proclaiming again and again that she really is me. Oh dear.

12:30 am – Fall into bed. Damn. Hopefully I can get to sleep earlier tomorrow.  And I guess I’ll straighten up my sewing table tomorrow, too.

Are you participating in Week in the Life 2012?  If so please share a link in the comments section so I can visit! 🙂