A day in the life ...

24 hours in my life - just for fun. I'll add to it during the day ...

Monday 26 May 2008

12.01am It's starting to rain. Goodness knows we need it, and my sadly neglected vege garden will appreciate it. Somehow rain seems to promote growth far more than any other sort of watering - not that there's too much growth at the moment, because it's getting cold overnight.

12.02am Keep working at the computer, making up for having the audacity to not work much over the weekend. Shame on me, but I got distracted by other things - like playing a game with the family on Friday night, having heavy machinery working in our driveway on Saturday (and breaking through our water main!), taking the almost-5-year-old to a birthday party for a preschool friend and starting a new crochet project. Work on overdue preschool newsletter and email it to teachers & parents' association president. Work on conference program (and discover crucial missing bits).

3.00am Finally admit there's no way on earth I'm going to finish the conference program tonight. Email the conference manager in Melbourne and ask about the missing bits. Computer has been getting a bit unstable, so do a complete shutdown for the night. Check sleeping children. Discover one (the restless sleeper) is in our bed. Listen to the husband snore for 20 minutes or so. Finally drift off to sleep.

6.45am Almost-5-year-old rolls over, kisses me, and greets me with "You are super mummy!". It almost makes up for having less than 4 hours sleep. Almost.

7.00am Alarm goes off. Listen to news on the radio. Struggle to keep my eyes open.

7.30am The X-man has dressed himself in shorts and t-shirt for preschool. It's about 5 degrees C. Suggest long pants and a warm jumper might be better. Crawl out of my nice warm bed to dig through basket of clean washing to find him long pants. Make sure Miss Tizz is getting dressed.

7.45am Stagger to shower to try to wake up. Wash hair. Yell to the husband to get the kids moving with breakfast.

8.00am Washed & dressed & semi-awake. Make sandwiches for children's lunches & pack lunch bags. Break up argument at breakfast table. Discover school jumper on floor of wardrobe with big mark on shoulder. Explain to Miss Tizz that she needs to put things in the laundry for washing when they're dirty.

8.30am World's slowest breakfast eaters finish eating. Direct one child to bathroom to wash face & clean teeth. Direct other child to pack school bag. Then swap. Break up fight in the bathroom. Find two library bags. Find jackets. The X-man discovers one of his boot inserts is missing - spend 10 minutes looking for it, to finally conclude it must have come out in the tub of shoes at the play centre birthday party yesterday. Mind you, we walked around a supermarket for half an hour later, and he didn't mention it feeling funny, so not quite sure where it is.

8.45am They're going to be late. Again. Plait Miss Tizz's hair, to numerous complaints - "Owww! Ouch! You're hurting me!" Same as every morning. The husband & boy child head for the car. Girl child follows. Bye! Have a fabulous day! I love you!

9.00am Put on load of washing. Unpack dishwasher. Repack dishwasher.

9.15am Start up computer. Toast a leftover bread roll for breakfast. Get out coffee cup & plunger, but get distracted before making coffee. Go back to computer - start up email program, calendar program, browser - check Bloglines & read a couple of blog entries.

9.30am Husband home with fundraising chocolates from preschool. Apparently the newsletter I drafted last night is supposed to have the fundraising details in it, but no-one has sent them to me. Email fundraising co-ordinator. Receive email from conference cordinator in Melbourne - I don't have the missing advert & program because they haven't sent them to me yet (ahhh - that lets me off the hook!).

10.00am Pull washing out of machine. Start a second load. Fog has lifted and it looks like a nice day after all, so I'll hang the washing outside when this lot's done. Set up slow cooker and make an orange vegetable curry for dinner. At least that's what I think it will turn out to be. I really should follow a recipe - I'm not the world's best cook - but I've thrown in a tin of chickpeas, some leftover rice from the fridge, some frozen pear & pepper soup (as stock), a diced sweet potato, a huge diced carrot & a diced red capsicum, together with some curry powder. At least slow cooking is very forgiving. May add some light coconut cream later. Maybe.

10.30am Notice coffee cup. Get distracted. Check email - more work has come in. Decide to avoid it and write this post instead. Try ringing the mother of yesterday's birthday girl to see if she has the X-man's boot insert - her mobile is turned off.

11.30am Remember to hang out washing. It's starting to cloud over *sigh*. Never mind - some sun is better than none at all. Look at weeds in vege garden while I'm outside, then decide I really need to get back in and do some work (you know - the stuff people pay me to do). Check email, Check Bloglines. Update here. Remember I haven't rung my mother for her birthday yet. Oops!

12.30pm In the past hour I've rung mum & sang to her answering machine (will ring again later this afternoon when the kids are home), actually done some work (!), been distracted by my new crochet project sitting on my desk (but avoided picking it up so far), responded to some work emails, checked on the dinner (stirred, turned it down, added the coconut cream, argued with the husband about the increased vego content of our meals - "Why can't you cook normal stuff?" "If you want meat & 3 veg go right ahead and take over the cooking - I have no problem with that"), and finally got my coffee. Yay! Having it with a particularly spicy Bhuja mix. Oh - and washed the school jumper, and tried ringing about the boot insert again (still switched off).

1.20pm I've been working ... and then I got distracted by a product mentioned in the text of a document I'm working on. ecoVag. Really. I'm sure it's a good product and all, but ecoVag? Although apparently it's pronounced eco-vaaj, so that should make a difference. Uh-huh. I think I'd rather walk into a pharmacy and ask for a vaginal capsule than ask for ecoVag. Oh - and from the contact page: "If you would like to share your ecoVag experience, please email your feedback here." Anyone want to share?

2.20pm Sweet chili & lime salmon sandwich for lunch. MIL came round and bought some fundraising food - Guide biscuits & preschool chocolate. Must remember to ask my mother if she wants us to take some up this weekend. Packed up this kids' swimming bags and packed off the husband & MIL to collect kids & take them to swimming lessons. Tried ringing the birthday girl's mother again to see if she happens to have the X-man's boot insert - mobile is switched off, and it's the only number I have for her. Perhaps the husband will see her at preschool and think to ask. The fundraising chocolates are calling. So far I'm resisting.

3.00pm Afternoon slump. Gave in. Eating Cadbury Dairy Milk Mint Chips. Yum. And crocheting. But set a limit of 3pm, which gave me just 7 minutes on my project. And I took a photo of it, which I'll upload later. And I stuffed around with a stat counter, just because I could and it's a distraction. Ok - back to work now.

4.30pm He did ask about the boot insert, and they don't have it, so I rang the play centre. The cleaners are in tonight (what- they're not in every day?) and often hand things in as lost property, so I will ring again tomorrow and see if it's turned up. Washing in - it's starting to get cool & damp outside. I'm currently fighting with a PowerPoint presentation for a client (let me mention here that Microsoft software is not at the top of my list for anything). Anticipating the return of the hordes very soon.

5.20pm Everyone's home, it's dark already, and dinner is ready when we are :) Turns out my PowerPoint problem was caused by the husband kindly changing my video card for me while I was away. All fixed now, but had hoped to get the presentation to the client this afternoon ... The X-man put his face in the water at swimming today! Yay! This is a BIG deal :) And Miss Tizz apparently dove to the bottom of the pool (probably more like a head down & grab something off the bottom, but still better than she's done before). I'm not too fussed about them being champion swimmers or anything, but I do want them to have enough skills to not panic and to get themselves out of a watery situation, should one occur.
The X-man came home with a paper 'apron' from preschool, with the major organs stuck on it - they're looking at the body at the moment. Last week they had a skeleton in their room. And exciting news! A good friend has just announced she's pregnant :)

6.00pm PowerPoint struggle over - file emailed to client. Bye bye! Dinner time ...

7.45pm It's quiet, apart from the hum of computers, the dishwasher, the rain on the roof, and the crinkle of fundraising chocolate wrappers (nope, not me this time). The small people of the family are tucked up for the night (after much "Ewww! Capsicum!" at dinner, which, by the way, was very nice) and I'm having some R&R (in front of the computer of course) & chatting to a friend on MSN while I'm blogging.
Speaking of friend ... I bought some Oztops and have just started my first batch of apple cider brewing.

8.45pm I've spent the past hour loading up some photos and tracking down Ben 10 and/or Sportacus (from Lazy Town) gear for my mother to get for the X-man's birthday. Ben 10 Transforming aliens are on special at Toys'r'us in Australia this week - $19.99 save $5 if anyone's interested :P And there's a Sportacus costume at Toys'r'us too - I love that he still wants to dress up :)

11.20pm Still here. Did some work. Played an on-line game for too long. Left some message on blogs. Caught up on some website forums I read. Started a budget. Woohoo! Something I've been meaning to do for a long time, and much as I hate the idea of being tied to something like this, I can also see that it will give me more freedom in the long run. It's something that I keep starting, but never get too far with, but this time it's different. Hmmm ... well, we'll see.

Ok - time to knuckle down, finish a couple of work things and then get to bed a bit earlier than last night.

11.59pm Just about done for the night. Have finished a newsletter job and burned it to CD, ready to call the printer in the morning. Have updated my diary for tomorrow. Have managed a couple of rounds of crochet while waiting for the computer to re-boot after I crashed it (probably by having too many big programs open at once, and zipping between them once too often). Have printed a master copy of the preschool newsletter for photocopying and distributing tomorrow. Have received an email back from the client with the PowerPoint presentation to say he's happy with it. Just a couple of small (I hope so!) amendments to the association website I maintain to make, then I'm off to bed, before it all starts again tomorrow (more of the same plus preschool duty). *Yawn* Goodnight.

1.30am The small amendments took a little longer than expected, but it's all done now, and it's earlier than last night. One thing I did notice writing it all out like this was that I didn't play with the kids today :( I got them ready for school, I talked to them when they got home from school/swimming lessons, and fed them and put them to bed. But I didn't play with them. Something to improve on tomorrow.