A Day in the Life

Can we pretend it’s still Tuesday, so I don’t have to change everything in this post from present to past tense?  Great, thanks!

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Really, I have to start with last night, when I opened the lid on a pot that had been simmering for 20 minutes and the steam stripped the flesh from three fingers on my left hand.  Okay, maybe not “stripped the flesh” but it burned pretty bad.  I slept with a bag of frozen corn on my hand.  Which brings me to this morning, when I woke up with blisters on my middle finger.  Fun!

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I’m going into the office early today, so I spent a majority of last night A) cooking dinner and B) prepping breakfast and lunch for today.  I almost never eat breakfast at work (I mean, I already have to eat lunch there!), but I have a rule about never waking up earlier than 6 AM, so sack breakfast it is!  I load a small suitcase of food, plates and workday essentials, like the book I’m currently reading, into the car and whew, I’m only 5 minutes behind schedule.

I get to the office and warm up my breakfast — pearled barley, a butternut squash compote and almond milk topped with salted pepitas and toasted coconut.  That sounds like the kind of breakfast I’d usually make fun of but I was required to try it as part of the Bon Appétit Food Lover’s Cleanse and now I’m momentarily hooked.  While I’m eating, I’m also checking my email and texting my mom about how my glasses are crooked and everything else I can think to complain about.

I have an order to get out so I eventually open my set of plans and start on that.  Joey texts me from home where he was waiting for someone to come measure for the new countertops we ordered last week.  Bad news, we were supposed to glue the sink down when we installed it so he can’t do any of the measuring.  Joey isn’t the type to get upset easily (that’s me), but I can tell he’s disappointed.  Later, he tells me he bought a breakfast burrito and is “eating his feelings.”

Back to ordering!  I stop once to change the song on my iPod.  I’m listening to a “Valentine’s Day Pop” station and it’s playing Nick Jonas’s “Jealous” for the second time in 10 minutes, so no thanks.  At 11, I realize I’m starving and noon could not come sooner.  I take my fish out of the fridge so it has an hour to come to room temp.  I don’t want to eat it cold and I don’t dare microwave it because I know how that smells and I don’t hate my coworkers that much.  My mom sends me a picture of a bacon, egg and white cheddar sandwich on sourdough that she just made and it’s torturous.  This seems as good a time as any to get up from my desk and take a walk outside, which I do twice a day (weather permitting).  It’s my daily joy but also a huge annoyance because inevitably, some guy driving past will A) whistle B) stare or C) cat call and I, for the life of me, cannot understand why anyone would think that was appropriate or acceptable behavior.  Feels less like a compliment and more like objectification, if you ask me.  End rant.

I eat a giant salad with butter lettuce, shaved fennel, oranges, black olives and last night’s leftover tilapia, which I flake apart with my hands.  If any of my coworkers had seen me, they probably would’ve been disgusted.  Oh and I discover a kombucha I bought last week in the fridge and decide that sounds better than water.  I eat by myself at my desk because Joey admits the breakfast burrito he emotionally ate at 10 was actually two breakfast burritos.  I love that man.  I attempt to eat undistracted but alas, I’m powerless to Twitter.

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After lunch, I finish my order from this morning (why did this take me so long?!) and get through a second one before moving onto invoicing for the rest of the day.  At 3:45 I decide I’ve been at work for almost nine hours and grant myself permission to go home.  I NEVER go home that early but I went in early hoping I could leave before the sun went down and sneak in a run outside.  So I do just that.  After I eat a banana snack, of course.  Despite “not really feeling like it,” my run actually turns out to be pretty enjoyable.  I swear I pass a 5-year-old behind the wheel of a parked car at one point, but decide it’s just my eyes playing tricks on me.

When I get home, I text Joey that I made it back and remind him to be home before Jeopardy starts.  I also realize I feel like I’ve barely seen or spoken to him all day, which isn’t a feeling I have often, considering our offices are literally next to each other.  I try to decide if I want to start dinner or take a shower in the hour I have to kill.  “Maybe both?!” says my inability to relax, so I pull up the dinner recipe on Pinterest and get to work.

I finish up cooking just as Jeopardy starts, so we decide we’ll eat afterwards and zone into the show.  Hannah’s sister Jen is a contestant in the Teacher’s Tournament and this is the semi-finals.  SHE WINS!!!  It’s so incredible to watch her.  She babysat me as a kid, so that means some of her smarts rubbed off on me, right?  We follow Jeopardy up with a dinner of roasted butternut squash, broccoli, red onion, cannellini bean and quinoa salad with an amazing orange vinaigrette.  I don’t usually eat so many salads in one day, I swear.

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Dinner is followed by a shower and Friday Night Lights.  I watch on the couch while Joey continues on his sink install project.  It terrifies me every time he picks the 180 pound sink up by himself.  A few episodes in, I make myself some dessert — this raw apple pie filling I’ve been in love with for a few months now.  Eventually Joey gets the sink finished and eventually I get up from the couch and get into bed.  We decide we’ll grab coffee together in the morning, even though that means getting up early.  I get into bed to read then it’s lights out and I wake up at 6 AM the next morning to the smell of skunks.  Kill me.

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