Friday, September 30, 2016

A Day in the Life: I'm Now 33

It's 11:36 p.m. on a Thursday night and my house is quiet (save the very loudly bubbling fish tank that has desperately needed a water topoff for probably three weeks now). Little T will wake up in probably 4 hours for her mid-sleep nosh, and in 7 hours everyone will be awake to start the day. The living room light (on a timer) just popped off, and I'm pretty sure Mr. T has been asleep for at least 1.5 hours at this point. And me? Well, I'm just 22 minutes out now from turning 33, and I thought I'd share a little "day in the life" post. If I could, I'd call this "Adulting Sucks."

5 a.m.: Little T decides on a 5 a.m. feeding instead of a 3:30 a.m. feeding. After she finishes eating and is back asleep, I consider staying up to get things done, but doze off instead.
6:38 Alarm goes off. Snooze.
6:52 Frantically wake up thinking I've slept much later than I have. Baby is rustling, and I'm zipping through work emails, Slack updates, Facebook notifications, and Timehop updates.
7:02 I attempt to wake Mr. T up because Asher's chatting away. (He's still in his crib after refusing a "big boy" bed, but he cannot or will not crawl out of his crib on his own.)
7:07 Little T starts to rustle away, but falls back asleep.
7:12 Me to Mr. T: "It's almost 7:15, we need to get up."
7:15 I get out of bed, get dressed quickly, inform Mr. T he's on baby duty for the morning and I go upstairs to get Asher.
7:24 After getting Asher out of bed and changed and mostly dressed, I'm in the kitchen organizing his lunch. I put Mr. T's tea on to infuse in our Teforia beta testing machine, get Little T's bottles into her backpack, finish up Asher's lunch and make him breakfast (which he doesn't eat), and get everything out into the living room to go.
7:36 Mr. T is upstairs with the baby getting her changed. Asher doesn't want his hair in ponytails so he's got a headband on. I put some "ponies" in a baggie with his name on it and stuff it in the front of his backpack.
7:45 I'm trying to get my computer, my breast pump, my water bottle, and everything else I need for a day working remotely outside the home ready while Mr. T attempts to get Asher to pick out shoes to wear.
7:54 We're slowly moving out of the house to the car to get the kids off to school. I say outlaid to no one: "I'm super mommy and did all the things this morning."
8:00 We're in the car and trying to leave, but the car won't start. "Where are the keys?" I ask. "You didn't grab them?" Mr. T asks. He runs back into the house to get the car keys.
8:05 We drop off Little T first. While Mr. T takes her inside, I get setup to pump milk on the go in the car while Asher jams out to the 90s tunes on the radio.
8:15 Asher has been dropped off, I remember that theres a room parent meeting at 9 a.m., and I'm now taking Mr. T to work.

8:20 Finally, at last, with both kids at daycare and the husband at work, I think about what to do with the next 40 minutes. So I go to the post office to get some priority shipping boxes that it turns out I already had at home and pick up a coffee before heading back to Asher's school for the parent meeting.
9:00 I'm waiting for the meeting to start, working on the shul's wifi.
10:00 Meeting over, I hop in the car and zip off to a coffee shop to hunker down and work until my noon call with my boss.

Noon I get set up in the car to pump milk while on a call with my boss, with the A/C blasting and using the wifi from the coffee shop I was just at, only to discover that the meeting has been bumped. I ask Mr. T if he'd like to have a lunch date, but he's covering for someone until 1.
12:20 I zip home to drop off my pumped milk and package up a few things to mail while holding down the fort on my phone and swap out computers.

2:00 After a fun gap in my day, I'm anticipating a call with my boss, but I need to get a few things at Target before the school day ends, so I grab my computer and headphones and head into Target to take a call before grabbing a few groceries. We can't connect, again, so I push the cart around Target with my laptop open, stopping intermittently to work and answer emails. I must look insane.
2:45 We finally connect, so I rush over to the Starbucks at Target and chat with my boss.

3:20 I'm back in my car, once again hooked up to the breast pump. I drop off something to Mr. T at work, warn him he might have to Lyft home, and head back to the house.
3:45 After having dropped off the groceries and the newly pumped milk, I'm back in the car to drop something at a friend's place, but find out she isn't there, so I opt to go pick up Little T instead.
4:10 Having picked up the princess, I text Mr. T to see if he wants me to get him before getting Asher, so I do. We then go get Asher, and Little T is really upset, so Mr. T walks them both home and I drive home and empty the car.

5-ish I'm trying to get dinner ready while Mr. T entertains the kids. I make vegetarian kefta with pita, Israeli salad, homemade hummus, and tahini. We sit down at the table to attempt a meal like a normal family, except that I'm answering work messages about pressing issues. Sorry, family.

6:30 I'm thinking about bedtime for munchkins, and Little T fell asleep while nursing, so I'm in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher and trying to get the house ready for the cleaners in the morning (they know not to do the dishes). I decide that it's a good idea to make challah (my gluten-free version and the regular, huge batch for the boys), so I get started on that.
7:15 I'm trying to nurse Little T to sleep so I can get back to the challah.
7:45 I remember that I don't have rubber gloves to braid the challah (I seriously put a ziplock bag on my hand and taped it around so it would stay in order to hand knead the dough, which worked for kneading but won't work for braiding). I text Mr. T to go out and get gloves so I can finish the challah, and he does.
8:00 I'm in the kitchen, doing dishes, braiding challah, cleaning.

10:00 The challah is done, the kitchen and living room are tidied, and I realize that I have a time-sensitive work issue to deal with. I start fiddling with a spreadsheet in order to make a pie chart.
10:33 I send Mr. T a text letting him know what I'm doing, but get no response, so he's passed out for the night.
10:55 I fall down the rabbit hole of doing some other things before I get back to the work at hand.
11:13 I think back to my day and realize that it's been a bit ridiculous and maybe I should blog about it.
11:36 I finally get around to blogging about it ...

And now, just now, the clock has struck midnight here in Denver, Colorado. I'm 33, folks. Of course, on the Hebrew calendar I was born on Simchat Torah (23rd of Tishrei, 5744), so maybe I'll have the energy to celebrate in several weeks.

Five years ago: Freshly divorced.
Four years ago: A few weeks from going to Israel, to making aliyah.
Three years ago: Severely glutened while pregnant at my birthday dinner, which landed me in the "ER" for 3+ hours on fluids. 
Two years ago: Downsized at my job and unbeknownst to me Tuvia was about to leave for nine months.
One year ago: On the eve of my birthday and the holidays, I discovered I was pregnant with Little T.

As for this year, I'm just praying for a calm, cool, collected, uneventful birthday. So, with that, friends, I'm going to bed. Goodnight moon.