October 2016 Day in the Life

According to my sidebar, I did one of these posts a year and a half ago, and it's also one of my most popular posts! I haven't been moved to do it in a while, but this year, something about it spoke to me, so here we go!

Again, I chose a Monday, but that's just a coincidence. It's still my day off, and I still love that schedule. I woke up around 6:30, which sadly is sleeping in, and even more sadly is hours later than it was a few months ago. Everyone slept all night too, so it was a relatively restful sleep. It's October and a gorgeous fall day. It's cool this morning, but should be nice later.

Feeling a bit like a mad scientist, I crush up some vitamins in almond yogurt (fun with food allergies!), and make some coffee in the french press. Which, can I just say, I think I'm doing fancy coffee wrong. I don't have a teapot, so I have to heat the water up in the microwave, and half the time I don't get to the second cup in the carafe while it's still hot, and I have to nuke it anyway. None of this is fancy. I should be demoted back to drip coffee with the hot plate to keep the second cup warm. I also threw in a load of laundry.

Breakfast is followed by playtime, and I remember that I'd planned to put something in the slow cooker for dinner. Yesterday I pulled out both chicken and a roast to defrost. The roast was still a bit frozen, so I decided on chicken, and, feeling uninspired, I googled. Cilantro lime chicken tacos sounded good, but I didn't have any salsa. Knowing I was probably making a mistake as I did it...I put in tomato sauce instead. I know, I'm ashamed. I didn't actually have any cilantro either, so I put in parsley and wondered if this was even going to be edible. I finished up in the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher. At this point it is about 9:30

I was surprised to see a familiar face on the tv when I walked back into the living room. A dad of a school friend was on some morning show talking about bike and pedestrian safety. I was glad that I was able to go back to the top of the segment to catch his name and confirm that he WAS who I thought he was. I have such a hard time recognizing people "out of context".

After that we settled back in for some more playing while I played my youtube "watch later" list in the background. I was treated to a podcast episode from Susan B. Anderson. I just love her, and knitting podcasts in general are just so great because you are nearly guaranteed that there won't be anything offensive to little ears. I pulled the sheets out of the washer and threw in the still gross shower curtain liner again with a couple of towels in super hot water to see if I could get rid of the mildew spot I had been trying to address. We have a block window on the back wall of our shower that is super not waterproof, so we have a clear shower curtain hung in front of it. We don't open and close it frequently since that's not the in and out curtain, and I had noticed a couple weeks back that I hadn't noticed a hidden fold and it was looking yuck. Spoiler alert, my plan didn't work.

Naptime = me time. 10 am, and I get set up to do some yoga. A friend saw my complaining that the 90 min P90X workout is just way too flippin long to get through, so he shared the newer version from P90X 3 with me (no, I did not know there was more than one version!). This one is only 30 minutes which is MUCH more manageable with my limited free time. I was surprised that it wasn't a super tough workout, but instead more on the level of a moderate flow class. Other than my lack of flexibility, I could do all the poses with the group, and only nixed the extra stuff like pushups during vinyasa and some of the more difficult yoga trick toward the end - I did manage all of the balance poses though, even crow!

Then I grabbed a quick shower and another #nomakeup selfie. In fact I skipped makeup all day because lazy.

I still had a little time, so I headed downstairs to continue working on a Halloween costume. So many layers of slippery, sheer fabric going through my poor machine. What a pain.

Around noon I stopped to get lunch going. We had leftovers, one with cheese, one sad without. Same serving sizes, and still the small one screeched when the food was gone. Which is nuts. Little bottomless pit!

I got the mail, and my husband is apparently A List now on Southwest. This is great and horrible, because we should get upgraded seat assignments if we can ever get away, and horrible because it means he's logged enough trips to have earned that status.

We headed outside for a bit to enjoy the weather. It was very nice in the sun without our jackets on, but there was just enough crispness in the air that I half regretted not putting them on. Oh well, I knew we wouldn't be out for long.

When we got back inside, it seemed like I was going to get a few non-hands on minutes, so I sat down to frog back a couple rows of a pair of socks. Now that I'm on the home stretch of my other in progress pair, I wanted to get these back to a pick up and go spot. I had started them back in June when I was doing a test knit for Chrissy and I didn't love how they were going so I switched from the pattern to just doing stockinette...but then I didn't like that either and decided to go back to the original plan. So that meant ripping back several rows of plain knitting. Props to the Kroy yarn, I think I only dropped two stitches....despite all this fun going on as I ripped.

3 pm, and naptime again. I mixed up my daily glass of greens. I'm surprised again and again how much I really like this stuff! I like the taste, I like that it makes me drink more water, and I like that I have more energy and have NOT caught the plague which is constantly surrounding me from my coworkers! I've been ordering the "old" version because they are on sale and I'm cheap. :) (Also, Miller glass - #milwaukee)

The skirt is now attached to the costume, and I set about installing the zipper. I hate installing zippers, and am extra nervous about all of those slippery layers and fluffiness. I put on Buffy to keep me company (YES I watch a lot of tv), and it's the horrible, sad episode where her mom dies. Still gets me, every time.

I get the zipper in, hold it up, and have done a crap job. I put it aside for now and contemplate redoing it. One the one hand, it's just a kid costume. On the other, it's an opportunity to practice a skill I suck at. I'll probably decide to fix it, but not today. I head upstairs, continue watching Buffy (alternating with Angel because I'm watching them all in original airing order because my friend Maggie mentioned doing that once) and started the first colorwork rows of my hat. So far, so good!

4:30, and the rest of the evening hours fly by in a flash. It turns out we didn't even have any tortillas, so I popped out to Target when my husband got home to grab those and some other random things, including the crazy pea protein milk I can ONLY get at Target (annoying) (I could also go to Whole Foods, but it's not conveniently located for me, and probably more expensive) and some new shower curtains because I give up. And fell victim to a $5 deal at the checkout line, which reminded me that I forgot to grab that movie as I flew out the door to return at the library. I made a mental note to drop it off before work Tuesday so we don't get fined. I stopped by my parent's house on the way home to collect my other child. We ate dinner, and while it definitely wasn't cilantro lime chicken (how can it be when you are missing 2/5 ingredients!?), it was edible, so that's good. After dinner we watched some Hocus Pocus before bedtimes for about an hour.

After bedtime, my husband and I popped on the Netflix series we are watching (oh my GOD we are going on some kind of screen time diet!!!), Bloodline. We are about halfway through season 2. It's ok, but it's something we can watch together, so that's always points positive. By the end of the episode, I finished the colorwork portion of my hat, hooray! I even learned how to "catch my floats" in the middle sections of the hearts.

10 pm, weirdly on the dot, and it's time for bed for me. Tonight's featured 20 minutes of podcast is an episode of the crafty planner, which is an interview based show by a former city planner. I usually have no idea who her guest is, but the host does a lot of research and asks pretty insightful questions, and I like that. Happily, I fall asleep easily.

April 2015 day in the life

 Every so often, I see other bloggers doing Day in the Life posts. Sometimes I read them, and sometimes I skip them. It sort of depends on my mood at the time I'm flipping through my feedly. From time to time I consider doing one, but honestly most of my days are quite boring. And while this one isn't actually all that interesting either, I decided to give it a shot this time around, as the blogger running the roundup now is one I've read for years, Julia at My Life in Transition. This very well may be a one time thing for me, but here we go.

As most of my days are nothing but work and probably not much I could photograph, I chose one of my Mondays off. Proving how long it takes me to get around to posting, these photos were taken on Monday, April 6. I was lucky enough to sleep in a bit, and woke to a typical midwestern spring day.

I like to listen to podcasts throughout the day, and this one started off with one I look forward to every month, Never Not Knitting.

A recent re-discovery of late is one of my favorite guilty pleasure breakfasts from my youth. I remember stacks of toast never coming up quickly enough for my family of five. We loved dipping them in the still warm pudding. I'm sure this is practically devoid of nutritional value with the exception of the milk....but I mostly don't care!

While I don't hold out much hope for this to actually grow, I was seduced by the adorable tiny terra cotta pot in the dollar section at Target.

I set up a little table in front of the window in the upstairs bathroom, which is one of the only sunny windows in our house which can actually accommodate something in front of it. (The others which face south are in the stairwell, are right where the refrigerator doors open, or are in the cat's normal resting place which I feel does not bode well for plants.) This bathroom is so strange - it's stacked directly on top of an identically sized and laid out bathroom on the first floor, however there is a shower downstairs where upstairs there is simply a space where it seems like a shower should be. We've considered putting one in many times, especially because the bedrooms are on the second floor, but between that and a facelift to the other bathroom, we're looking at about $10,000. We're getting to the point where we are probably over-improving our house for the neighborhood, so we've been giving some thought to the 5-10 year plan before deciding whether or not to go ahead with a big renovation.

Because I'm so woefully late posting this, I'm surprised to report that there are about half a dozen little daisy sprouts popping up!

For lunch, apparently everything in semi-circles and previously served. Leftover veggie and beef quesedillas topped with sour cream, followed by leftover super sprinkled cookies. Even that milk was taken home from lunch out the day before!

Stickers in our house are a multiple use toy, and these foam ones hold up better than most to repeated stickings. It's quite a feat given the amount of cat and dog hair living on every surface, and these pants are no exception!

Laundry, always laundry.

Apart from getting to spend time at home on Mondays, knit night also makes for a nice and easy start to my weeks. We got a new car a while back, and I love that I can listen to my stories through the stereo. I was accompanied by the fabulous Knitmore Girls on this particular trip. They were one of my very first podcasts a few years back, and I've since fallen down a deep but enjoyable rabbit hole of a ton of other podcasts. Yes, they ARE heavy on knitting content, but there are definitely a few that talk about other things. I try to save those for when I'm not alone in the car. :)

I finished my third pair of socks for my #operationsockdrawer, and I had quite a bit leftover so I made up a little preemie hat from the remaining ball while we were traveling for Easter the weekend before. I tend to get a bit motion sick in the car, so I didn't have anything else with me that didn't require reading a pattern or a chart, which made this little flour sack hat the perfect thing to whip up.

I'd planned to hang out a bit with my husband, but it was the final game of March madness this particular evening, which is just something I can't even pretend to be interested in. I retreated to my studio downstairs with a little hand sewing on the still-in-progress hex quilt. I watched an episode or two of House on Netflix. Is that show still on? I just started watching it about a month ago, and I really like it though I didn't expect to.

So yes, my day probably IS as boring as I expected it to be, but to be honest it was actually pretty ideal in my opinion. I'm definitely a homebody these days, so a day spent puttering around the house is a luxury that I'm happy to have.