*Note* My mom sent out an e-mail last week encouraging a laundry list of friends, children, and relatives to share an ordinary day with each other. She sees it an an interesting "slice of life" experiment. So far I've enjoyed reading about other's "normal" days. I wrote up mine and decided to share it on my blog, as well as sending it back with my mom's original e-mail. I figure my blog is pretty much the chronicle of my ordinary days...but it doesn't usually distill down entire days. Here it is, and I hope this encourages others to share their ordinary and normal days with me.


My “Normal” Day

I have to begin this by stating that I don’t really have any “normal” days…right now. I am blissfully between semesters and lucky enough to not be working. That leaves me a lot of time to myself, and I am enjoying it. Right before the holidays, I was busy shopping, cleaning, cooking and the like…right now I wish all of my days were like this:

Monday January 23, 2006

I woke up right before the 8:00 AM alarm and spent some time just dozing. When the radio turned on, I just listened to the morning show…the new one on Live 105. It’s not bad, kind of juvenile, but hey, they do play music. The latest song from Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae star (for some reason I see Mom getting a kick out of that) came on and I thought about how annoying reggae is in the morning. Then I ruminated on how I just really don’t dig reggae music. Give me some good roots rock and ska or rock steady…I’m there. Whatever. Mind you, this is coming from the girl going to Jamaica next year.

Finally managed to pull myself out of bed at 10:00 AM. Yeah. I spent almost two hours listening to the radio, chatting with Hubby, and being a complete slug-a-bed. I am truly going to miss this when my 9:00 AM class starts up Wednesday. I ate breakfast. It was a big bowl of Kashi Good Friends cereal. I have eaten more cereal in the past few months than I have in the past few years. Something about the crunchy sweet-ish cereal and colds milk…yum. Good food for baby, we both like it. Hubby took off for work and little sis made an appearance. She was planning on running errands and taking a placement test at her new school. I needed to: finish cleaning the kitchen and living room from Mom’s fab-o dinner party the night before, wash the tablecloth and napkins, move the table, run to Good Will, clean out my backpack, get school supplies ready and repair some chair cushions on the chairs we are going to be selling on Craig’s List.

All right. So, I began by running the dishwasher. Then sitting down to the Internet to check e-mail. Then I painted my stapler with sparkle nail polish to create a unique sparkly stapler. It’s really cute. I cleaned out the backpack and re-organized my supplies. I have four yellow barrel number two pencils, four back up black ink medium point click-y pens, plus the one Dr. Grip pen that I love to death. I made a note on my school-shopping list to pick up some refills for the Dr. Grip. I have all my multi-colored Sharpies: little keychain ones key chained to the inner backpack pocket and big ones in the hidden zipper pouch in the top of the backpack. I’m not sure exactly why I need Sharpies…I just do. I have my highlighters at the ready; I have my Post-It flag highlighters at the ready…made a note to pick up some plain Post-It flags for noting important pieces of text. One can never have too many flags of various colors. I have my red editing pencils. They might come in handy for my Career Writing class. Then things got really fun. I color-coordinated my notebooks to my pocket folders and labeled them for my classes with the corresponding Sharpie color. Yellow is for Food & Culture, red is Career Writing, green is for English Lit and black for Astronomy. All notebooks and folders have labels with the class name and days of the week I have the class. It makes getting ready and out the door to class in the morning so much eaiser.

And…the morning was burning by now. It was noon…Hubby called to ask me to mail some books off. We have been selling my old textbooks on Half.com. We’ve done really well this semester. In fact, we’ve almost covered the cost of the current semester books by the selling of past semester books. I like it. Back to the computer for me, where I was promptly sidetracked from my mission by blog reading. I have my daily blog check: Confessions of a Restroom Attendant, Soy Mama, Manic Mom, the communal ummmm blog, chronicles of the existence of divine comestibles, the Garden of Insanity…these are the ones I check, if not every day, then on a regular basis. Oh, I also check my own for comments. I know, kind of sad, but sometimes they pop up and I get happy. I don’t often post on other’s blog’s, so I don’t get too down when I don’t get posts on mine. I digress. I also checked on a Due in June message board at iParenting.com. Message boards are really the same. This one was full of It’s a Boy! and It’s A Girl! posts…’cause all the mommies are getting the 18-22 week ultrasound done, and most everyone in the normal universe finds out the baby’s sex before hand. Well, Hubby and I are different…we don’t know and don’t want to know. I like to think of it as a reward for all the hard work of labor…the announcement that Dr. D will make as soon as the little one pops out. I like having surprises to look forward to.

So, another hour down, I decide to eat some lunch before heading to the Post Office. I have leftover salad, artichokes with garlic and lemon, and crackers with olive spread. I read a couple chapters of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” while eating. I am so loving this book. It is really a fascinating way of looking at human development. I just finished agriculture and am well into the domestication of animals for food and labor. Wild stuff. Finish lunch up, package the books and decide to wear slippers to the Post Office, cause I don’t feel like putting on shoes. Right. Mail the books; realize I have forgotten to bring the Good Will donations with me, so oh well, that won’t get done today.

By the time I get back, it’s three o’clock and I have yet to clean or do anything significant. I debate on whether to take a nap or not. I decide not to, and instead do my nails. Hey, that’s important. I clean up nail stuff, clean up the living room and begin to think about cleaning the kitchen. Yeah right. Instead I make a bunch of music play lists on our home stereo set up. The Myth Box takes too long to explain…so I’m going to skip it. I will mention, Hubby taught me how to make play lists the day before and I have been very excited to do so. It’s fun making hours…nay…days of music to play that suit whatever mood I happen to be in. Little sis comes in and goes over her day with me…but this is my day so she’ll have to write her own. I decide that it’s time to nap…sleep past the yoga class I was going to take, get up and need to clean the kitchen. Cheery little sister pitches in and in no time at all, it sparkles. She did the laundry, dried dishes, put the weird serving platters-in their puzzle like configurations-away and generally was a huge help. I’m going to miss her when she’s gone.

By this time, dinner needed to be made. Stir-fry to the rescue! Put on some brown rice, sliced some lean pork and tossed in a bag of Trader Ming’s (Joe’s) Asian veggies and volia! Dinner was ready. Now if only Hubby was home…he got there around 7:45, put on Desperate Housewives and we ate and chuckled and ate and enjoyed the evening. Little sis took off to visit her boyfriend, and Hubby and I finished the evening by watching “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”. Neither of us had seen it in some time, and it was so very funny. That’s a movie that can be enjoyed over and over again. 11:00 PM showed up…time to gag down an absolutely awful pre-natal vitamin (yup…I have to refill my chewable prescription…another thing I forgot to do) and brush teeth in preparation for bed. We then snuggled down with the cats, which is a very rare occurrence in our house. The cats are not usually allowed to sleep with us…they get restless, we wake up…they start to jump on our heads…we toss them out. It’s better to just let them have the house to themselves at night. Little Violet was being a snuggle kitty and slept on me all night. I can’t complain, it was pretty nice and kept me from tossing and turning, I didn’t want to wake her up.

That’s it. That was my normal day…when not in school. When I have a schedule the days become much more…well…structured. I have the feeling though, my days will not be quite as relaxed and opened-ended in the very near future. At least not until the kids are grown and I can “retire” again…

Much love,

Valerie
01.24.06