A Day In the Life of Anne

Have you ever wondered what I get up to during a day?  I’ve been inspired by some Day in the Life posts, particularly the regular ones from The Asian Pear, so I thought I would try my hand at my own.  Let me know what you think!

This is a typical, but rare day in the life of Anne.  My work schedule means that I have every second Friday off, so Fridays can vary a lot.  My spouse works the same schedule as me, but due to some field programs that are running right now, was working this particular Friday.

7:30 I wake up and read my phone.  That’s what I do every day, but this is about an hour early for a day without an alarm clock.

7:45 I get up and make coffee and I empty the dishwasher.  I figure out why the fridge stinks so badly (well aged fish leftovers) and fix it by getting rid of the fish and washing the bowl.

8:10 I go help spouse thoroughly check a vehicle to confirm that my relatives’ missing keys are not in our possession.  They’re not there, which we figured, but wanted to make sure.  Because it’s not a regular work day, my spouse is going in late.  I clean up my guerrilla garden a little bit on the way back inside.

8:20 After that, I drink my coffee, make a to do list for the day and text a friend to set up a meeting with her.

Oh look!  A list of more things than I can possibly do today!

Kathleen sends me a fascinating article that takes me ages to read, about a repentant black hat SEO guy.  I repin some posts on Pinterest and check my stats.

Currently I am in love with this song, and I don’t know why in particular:

 

I get a text from my friend saying her morning has freed up, so she can meet for coffee whenever, so I dug out a Starbucks Groupon and printed it.

9:15-9:30 I scramble around madly trying to fill the dishwasher and put on a load of laundry.  I text my friend to say I’ll be five minutes late.

9:35-11:00 I have a coffee meeting with my friend.  I ended up installing the Groupon app on my phone, because the thing I printed out wasn’t working in their computer.

I ordered a Frappuccino and as it showed up on the counter I realized I forgot to ask for soy.  I may or may not feel like crap this afternoon, but figure I’ll go for it.  My friend and I chat a bunch and work on the logistics for an event we’re planning at the end of June.

It has probably been over a year since I was in a Starbucks.

11:00 – I head to the main street in town to run a few more errands.  I notice that the seamstress place is open, thank goodness, and stop in to pick up some pants that I dropped off several weeks ago.  She has been attending festivals and craft fairs, so I haven’t been around during her opening hours for awhile.  She has a craft fair in town tomorrow and is excited.  She makes a whole bunch of her own clothes and cute little things, especially these adorable infant dresses that are half crocheted and half sewn.

Next, I pick up a prescription, then stop in to check out a store that moved locations about a month ago, where my friend is the manager.  We chatted for a bit and I learned that one of my favourite coffee shops happily makes her drinks with her own coconut milk carton.  That’s awesome news because I’m allergic to everything and miss their amazing almond milk drinks. (see above re: forgetting to ask for soy)

I cross the street to head to the bank and a friend waves at me from the store she works at.  I hear the voice of a friend I haven’t seen in a month or two and head in to chat.  He is running a bike coaching program for kids right now and was talking about getting kids to cross bike bridges successfully… these are tips that I totally needed, I hate crossing bridges!  Here’s hoping I manage to do what he said the next time I’m on a trail.

Next I deposit a cheque and take out some cash at the bank, then on the way back to the car stop in to my friend’s flower shop to take a look around and say hi to her.  It turns out she’s going to an awesome business course in LA in a few weeks.  We commiserated about the tanking Canadian dollar.

12:15 I look at the clock and realize I had best get home if I am going to get anything done.  On the way to my vehicle, I pop in to another shop and look for a small piece of my spouse’s birthday present.  Thankfully, they have what I am looking to buy.

12:30 I get home and check the mail, which I forgot to do on my way out the door this morning.  I’m waiting for a baby gift to arrive, before my spouse flies to Ontario where the family lives.  We haven’t checked the mail in at least a week and it’s stuffed, but mostly with free magazines.  Thankfully the baby gift is there!

Mail!  Including more awesome things than normal.

I get home, sit down to write part of this post, and realize that I am starving!  I’ve only had an oat bar from Starbucks to eat so far today, and the eleven million calories that were in the frapp.  I start opening the mail and am happy to see that our property taxes haven’t gone up since last year, in fact I think they might be $10 less!

I also received the income tax receipt for the scholarship that I give my high school.  I haven’t always got them in the past, which has been a bone of contention for me, so I was very happy to see it.  I added it to my 2015 tax file folder and emailed the school to say “Thanks, I got it!”

My spouse’s new driver’s licence showed up as well.  It’s a new card that combines a driver’s licence and a health card into one thing.  I am pretty stoked that the government is getting more efficient.  The picture sucks, like all ID seems to.  They look even worse since they made the photos greyscale a few years ago.

1:00 Okay, I’m really hungry now and try to find food in the fridge.  I eat a small piece of leftover venison steak with some leftover chimichurri sauce.  Then I dump sweet chili sauce onto leftover vermicelli, only to discover that we don’t have any peppers left.  I’m too lazy to peel and grate a carrot just for my lunch, so I eat the sweet chili and vermicelli, while lamenting that I’m about to tell the internet I ate a horribly unhealthy lunch.  On days where I am “working,” on internet stuff at home, I make myself a lunch, like Jessica does to keep her stay at home mom life under control.

In between bites, I swap the laundry and start emptying the dishwasher.  Lunch containers fill the whole dishwasher in the blink of an eye, which drives me nuts, but I’m not about to hand wash wash them when they are covered in fish and oily sauces.  I’m lazy.

Your day would not be complete without a picture of my dishwasher.

1:30 I text my Dad a picture of a broken part of my coffee maker handle, asking what kind of nut I need to buy to attempt to fix it.  It broke last weekend and has been sitting on my counter since then.

I also log into my banking, to check for a transaction.  My Mom had texted earlier in the day because the gift card I got her for Mother’s Day hadn’t arrived.  I *thought* I made it all the way through the checkout process, but wanted to make sure before I paid again.  Apparently I didn’t, so I bought another gift certificate online.  I love that my Mom’s favourite local restaurant has an extremely robust online gift certificate program.

1:45 I go back to reloading the dishwasher and hand washing some pans from last night’s dinner.  Around 2, I decide I’m on a roll and I’m going to tackle a project that I’ve been putting off for over a year.  I decided to clean the inside of my oven door.  Catherine cleaned hers months ago, and even at that point I had been putting it off for ages.

2:15 I took a look at the door and concluded that my safety concerns were slicing my finger on something exposed, dropping part or all of the door on me or smashing it on the floor, and stepping on screws.  Knowing they were all controllable, I cleaned the already exposed surfaces (so I could tell what marks were on the inside) and proceeded to take apart the door.  From start to finish, including putting a lot of elbow grease into some stubborn marks, it took about 35 minutes.

I love me some DeWalt power tools.

While I was reassembling the door, my friend texted to see if I was still available to help her move a piano. (I told you today was atypical!)  I had forgotten about this, and forgotten to tell her that my spouse was working today.  She said she’d be back to her place at 4 with it, and I said I’d meet her there.

See all that gross stuff on the floor under the oven?  Yuck.

When I had the bottom oven drawer fully removed, I discovered it was rather disgusting underneath.  Washing the kitchen floor was also on my to-do list, though not necessarily for today.  It was not optional once I saw under that drawer!  I cleaned the whole floor and it looked so much better.

3:00 I’m stoked about how much I’ve managed to get done today and have decided that internet work is just not going to happen today, but that’s okay because of all of the other things.  I queue up two of my favourite soundtracks and tackle another project that has been waiting for two weeks: rewrapping the grip tape on my spouse’s bike handlebars.

It’s unraveling. It turns out it was pretty straightforward to rewrap and didn’t require a complete overhaul.

It also occurs to me that “sitting on the coffee table” is not the best place to leave my spouse’s birthday present, so I stuff it in a gift bag and put it next to the other ones.

Why yes, that is a rather giant red box, isn’t it?  My spouse also wants to know what’s inside.

Before I tackle the handle bars, I decide to finish the soaking hand wash dishes, and the two tupperwares that didn’t fit in the dishwasher.

What I thought were my necessary tools.  Turns out I was wrong.

After I rewrap the bike handle bars, I move on to my own bike. At the end of last season, I broke off my cadence sensor.  I’m really hoping that the fix will work, because you can’t get replacement parts and this bike computer cost a few hundred dollars.  I have had the epoxy to fix it for a bit more than a month, but haven’t got around to it.

That’s an upside down spice container. It’s been annoying me for at least a year, none of my easy fixes have worked.

I also had a broken spice container, that I had tried fixing in the past with double sided tape, which definitely did not work.  I tried to clamp the cadence sensor on so the glue could set and it kept slipping.  After mucking with it for way longer than planned, I was able to get it in the right spot with some zip ties, but this was making me late to go help with the piano.

I finally got it to stay in place with some zip ties.

4:05 Racing, I head out the door to my friend’s to help with the piano, grabbing my hiking boots and a pair of socks (sandals + moving a piano = bad idea).  I take the coffee maker handle with me, hoping to swing by the hardware store, but knowing that “after-piano drinks” are more likely.  Just as we almost have the piano in the house, it starts raining.  Then it starts downpouring.

When I’m there, I get a text message from my spouse, “someone should help me drink this cava.”  I love sparkling wine.  Some of the group were going to go out for dinner, but clearly there was a whole bottle of cava open at home.

I head to the grocery store to pick up some peppers, some fruit, and something for dinner.  I grab chicken dogs because a picture of chili dogs on pinterest this past week had me craving them.  I also grab some portabello caps to barbecue.

Bubbles!  A fantastic way to motivate an Anne.

5:15 Home!  Sparkling wine!  Dinner.  Once the groceries are away and dinner is made, we sit down to eat and watch Entourage.  The movie is coming out at the beginning of June and we wanted to catch up on it.  I had forgotten how awesome this show was.

Hot dog buns would be on the list of “things we can’t eat that often mean food is expensive.”

7:45 We change and head to meet some friends at the hot tub in our building.  One guy has a friend and his son visiting from out of town and the four year old has a blast playing in the pool.  After a few hours by the pool, we grab some drinks and head to one guy’s house.  We end up watching American Sniper, but turn it off at the halfway mark because it’s 11:30 already.

11:30 We head back downstairs to our place, I take a quick look at my emails and Facebook on my phone and go to sleep.  Today has been pretty awesome and rather productive.  I didn’t get a post written and I didn’t get some pants fixed, but I got a lot of other projects done.  I wish more days were like today: very productive and full of friends.

 

I’m told I should do this for a more typical day, too.  Would you be interested in that?