One of my life indulgences is a subscription to a magazine, yes, a hard copy, not very environmentally friendly I know, but I use the recipes, try the crafts, pass on to friends and doctor’s surgery etc so I feel less guilty. One of the things I love each month is the ‘My day in cups of tea’. Less for the cups of tea (I’m not a real tea drinker) but more for voyeurism and seeing other people’s days, especially crafters. I thought, for fun, I’d map out a typical (non-working at school) day to see for myself what my day looks like today:
5.30am – get woken up by the dogs coming upstairs. The older one (over 100 in human years) has pooped in the kitchen- – lucky me !!
5.32am – curse loudly and nearly pass out from the smell! Start the clean up process along with making dog parent noises to show my ‘pissed off-ness’ with said geriatric.
5.45am – put middle child’s washing in the dryer as it’s raining and he needs it to take back to uni today (he has ‘last minute dot com’ – it is an official condition 😉 !) Realise that I saw most of the washing that is coming out of the machine a few days prior and the lazy wotsit has just put clean washing in with dirty. Curse more.
6am – start with a strong coffee after having cleaned up said poop! This is probably my only cup of joe in a day, but it’s done barista style so it’s a ceremony! Start to feel better about my day.
6.15 – realise I’m giving a presentation at 3pm today so start a speedy set of notes which, for someone with high functioning anxiety, turns into a Powerpoint presentation with notes and handouts (sometimes I am my own worst enemy!) Curse a little and wonder if I could pull a sickie but realise that the fraud squad (my head) would seek me out and make me feel guilty for the rest of my life!
6.15 (also) turn on ovens as realise that I have four loaves of bread to bake today before youngest goes to dance with her friend who slept over (will need to provide lunch for both) and middle goes back to uni (will send him with a loaf). Trip over pooper and curse again.
6.30 – remember I need to pack some soap for a friend – HFA = I have to do it with ribbons and tissue and a little card, rather than just popping it in a box 😉 Enjoy the process and drop a smile in the box too!
6.45 – Can hear husband moving around upstairs, so get his tea going quickly as if I had always had it on the go. Put cloches into oven to heat, get rolls and bread from outside fridge for final shaping.
6.50 – Husband comes down asking how long I’ve been up. The drama queen in me retells the tale of exploding shit all over my kitchen rug and hands and knees until raw… That should make him feel guilty enough to get up first tomorrow 😉
6.55 – Light candles and open window as still smelling like a badger’s arse in the kitchen – wonder if I should have another cup of coffee, put on a jumper instead!
7am – play with ‘design ideas’ to make said boring presentation look less boring. Also put first two loaves of bread in.
7.10am – print off presentation and upload slide show to relevant platform.
7.35am – look at planning for Monday back at work – find something from the TES (thank you other hardworking teachers) as am unable to actually teach my subject practically at the moment (thank you COVID-19) so need something that makes it less dry. Realise that music without physical music is dry, perhaps we’ll just listen to LOTS instead.
7.40am – print that off.
7.45am – start to write my day in cups of tea and realise when I get to 7.45 that I’m exhausted and ready to go back to bed! But I can’t, bread in, Alexa reminds me (supercilious cow-bot!)
7.50am take lids off cloches to crisp up first batch.
7.55am – prepare the second batch and the rolls have got sticky – curse, re-shape with more flour. Swap loaves over to bake second batch. Think about what I’m going to make for dinner.
8am – husband comes home from walking the nice dog, puts wet paws all over the floor – make mental note to wash floor and kill husband. Ask husband what he wants for dinner.
8.05 – husband ceremoniously announces that ‘thar’s a storm comin’ in’ in his best Farmer Hagrid voice. Then proceeds to announce he’s going outside to Karcher the path. I explain that it might be wiser to not shovel shit under a horse and just wait for ‘Aiden’ to pass and perhaps tomorrow? Husband makes toast instead.
8.10 go around opening curtains, picking up after lazy arsed teens, shaking cushions to make my house try to look like ‘House Beautiful’, trip over shoes, trip over dog, curse.
8.15 – clean up eggs and pack up those ordered for this weekend.
8.30 – empty tumble dryer and rebelliously put all clothes in a tangled pile back in middle child’s laundry basket for him to fold. I am SUCH a rebel – go me!!
8.35 – decide I need to eat as hanger is now setting in. Go to make toast, and realise gits have left a crust – bread from oven still too hot to eat, settle for bird food with natural yoghurt and a deep sense of no joy.
9am – calm for a few hours – I can hear the birds again, smell the candles, smile at the poop machine… Get second batch of bread out. Go and look in freezer for something for dinner. Realise that despite my new year resolution being to label everything I put in the freezer, I haven’t got a frickin’ clue what anything is. Get out three pots; one of frozen orange stuff, one of frozen yellow stuff and one of chicken; decide that I can make curry out of whatever it turns out to be and leave the meat out for me – get some prawns out too just in case one turns out to be trifle!!
9.10 – get up teens who need to get make up done for ‘halloween’ session at dance this week.
9.15am – get up middle child because I am mean and it is because he left the door open that I started my day before life on earth existed! He makes strange noises, I smile and use my bestest outdoor voice to remind him he has washing to sort and a bag to pack and ‘oh…he left the door open last night so I woke up at 5.30am’.
9.20am – return down to find husband ‘skating’ on a towel across the floor – ‘just cleaning the muddy paw prints up’ – thanks 😉 x
9.25 – remind teens they need to destroy my kitchen whilst finding food for their lunches. Remind them to also leave everything out for me to clear up and the fridge door open. Also remind them that they can steal my special cakes that we brought back in a doggy bag from our ‘afternoon tea’ gift from my mum that we finally got around to using yesterday after 2 years of having it (I had mint tea in case you were wondering!)
9.28 – Mother rings! Slight reorganisation of weekend as need to do a ‘Christmas present drop’ under cover of darkness before we are all curfewed and have to stay home for another month (except me as I am exempt, so need to work with 400 germ spreaders daily!)
9.30 – take Wednesday Adams and her sidekick to dance class and debate buying duck eggs from the farm shop because I can. Note the tyre pressure warning is on on the car – curse, drive home to act all pathetic and get husband to deal with it.
10.30 – decide against duck eggs as I can’t be arsed to drive just for eggs, think about what to do for dinner this evening as trifle is not a trifle, but clearly also not quite of this world – curry, chilli?? Clean kitchen deep in thought!
11am – get manchild out of pit and into wet water facility so I can strip his bed and purge his dungeon.
11.10 – start finding plates and missing items of cutlery – curse and wonder what I did to get kids that are so disgusting.
11.30 – having piled stuff on his bed so I can hoover, banged on the door to get him out of the shower that he’s been in for too long, I contemplate whether I should wrap the Christmas presents I have already bought as I’ll be back at work on Monday and clearly won’t ever have time between now and Christmas. Eventually decide against it and just move them to another spot instead. Make our bed. Clean our bathroom. Wish I’d gone for a run or done yoga this morning (I think this every morning, so should probably just do it!).
12.00 – decide it’s time for some cheese. I bought Stinking Bishop the other day because it’s the only thing I can put in my fridge and know that when I go to eat it, it’ll still be there. Sadly the thought that the smell would pervade thus stopping people eating ANYTHING in the fridge was not well executed, but I tried.
12.05 – enjoy the sensation of eating a lovely lump of slimy, soft, stinking of foot cheese with a huge grin on my face.
12.06 – spend the next 5 minutes scrubbing my hands to get rid of the smell that has turned me into an un-gloved bovine vet!
12.10 – waste 15 minutes on Facebook scrolling through life.
12.25 – find another huge pile of laundry around the house and wonder who these people are that wear so many clothes. Put dried clothes onto bed in ‘person piles’ and realise that it sure as hell ain’t me so either I’m a scuzzball or there is a need to wear at least two items of clothes per day, two pairs of socks (yes this IS my husband – drives me inSANE – why does he not just buy thicker bloody socks?? Answers on a postcard!)
12.30 go to allotment to pull up cabbages before they get waterlogged.
1pm – Come back to house with said cabbages to say goodbye to middle child as he is due to catch his train. Bittersweet – kind of enjoying the fact there will be food in the house and less water used but genuinely worried that I may not see him and his brother for Christmas. Feel tearful – slap myself and remember he eats my food!! 😉 Give him a cake I made, a loaf of bread, a half dozen eggs and a kiss. He smiles, says thanks and says ‘Oh yes, my eggs will probably be off now’. ‘Probably not, you’ve only been here 2 weeks’, I say ‘When did you buy them?’ ‘Oh I didn’t!’ he replies, ‘They were the ones you gave me when I left’ Gag (as this was September 12th) and tell him to dispose of them in the OUTSIDE bin, start to worry about him getting food poisoning over Covid!
Remind myself to snapchat him in 10 minutes 😉
1.10 – go back upstairs to blitz his room and put on fresh sheets.
1.30 -sit down with knitting and a cup of licorice and peppermint tea. Stick on some mindless tv for 10 mins.
1.40 – feel guilty, get up, go and poke soap that’s curing to decide whether it’s ready, whether to ‘insta’ more pictures, decide not to. Poke jewellery that didn’t sweat solder correctly last week and curse a bit as I’m now behind. Turn on piano, play a few bits.
2pm – empty dishwasher and washing machine, get ‘puter ready for presentation. Lay out everything so I can find it and don’t get tongue tied.
2.10 – youngest arrives back from morning dance classes – destroys clean kitchen looking for something to eat as she’s ‘staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarving’. Sigh, curse, make another cup of tea, find glasses so I look more intelligent. Realise I can’t find glasses, find old pair of glasses, realise they’re the wrong prescription so I can’t actually see…panic, where are my glasses. Start to turn house upside down to find glasses, accidentally step in wet patch from this morning where I cleaned poop, curse, fall over poopy, sleeping dog, curse, curse that if I had my glasses I would have seen her.
2.45 – still not found my glasses – jump on computer, squint, look at reflection, wince, realise I haven’t brushed my hair, or, maybe I did but this is what it looks like after having been up for 8 hours already….log-in – computer network switches off. Curse technology, curse country living, curse doing a stupid master’s degree. Turn off network, turn on, rant at Alexa (who can’t hear me as the network is rebooting – realise this and feel an idiot). Network reconnects.
3pm – log in to meeting to give presentation
Intermittently – get interrupted to let dogs in and out – frequently – like an old lady with a weak bladder!
5.10 pm – feel like I’ve been in a train wreck. Wonder if it’s too early to make a gin and tonic!
5.11pm – analyse what I said in the presentation word for word.
5.12pm – Whats App colleagues on group chat to debrief. End conversation remembering that presentation doesn’t actually count and we didn’t even actually have to do one. Feel magnanimous that I have wasted 3 hours of my day preparing, sitting through and presenting but hope that deep down when I hand in a shoddy attempt at academic research they’ll give me a couple of brownie points cos I ‘did’ turn up (HFA!!)
5.45pm – Husband comes down and asks if I’d like to go for a drink. I say ‘no’ as I’m exhausted (I know right!! what have you done with me?) but a cup of tea with a gin and tonic chaser at home would be lush.
6.15 – think about preparing dinner, but enjoying G & T a bit too much.
6.30 actually start dinner.
6.45 – sit down to watch final chapter of LOTR (annual pre-Christmas watch in our house). Finally remember to snapchat middle child who may be back at uni digs or not…oops!!
9.45pm – flake, get up tell husband I’m not doing any more, I cooked it all therefore I’m going to bed.
Fall asleep with book on face (or so I’m reliably told).
Thornhill House 