A Day in My Life

Alarm goes off at 6am. I hit snooze as the thought of continued sleep sounds so much better than even a gentle Rodney Yee session of yoga.

My children wake up, one by one, to pee and then commence talking and making loud bumps doing heaven only knows what in their bedroom.

I get up and yell at them calmly tell them that I would like a few more minutes of sleep and that they should be in their beds, silently waiting for me to wake them.

I go back to bed, get comfortable only to hear the real alarm go off at 6:30am.

I get out of bed and abruptly flip on my children's light again calmly tell my children in a sing-song voice that it's morning and time to get up. I stomp off to the kitchen, not the least bit grumpy or feeling guilty that I chose sleep over stretching with Rodney. (Yes, we have a lightning rod on the house. Why do you ask?)

I make a delicious breakfast of eggs and pancakes (did you notice I didn't have to add any strike throughs there?) and feed my children (and the two dogs - one akita, one black lab) patiently waiting and drooling at the edge of the kitchen.

I sit on the couch and read my scriptures and pray (assuming the call of the couch doesn't lure me back to sleep) while, ahem, gently reminding my children to get ready for school. (Yes, I'm that good. Aren't you glad God doesn't grade on a curve? And yes, the irony of reading about the kindness of Jesus and the value He placed on children while I'm yelling and, perhaps, even at times using sarcasm to motivate my children is not lost on me.)

Around 7:29am I frantically pull my daughter's hair into some sort of do so it isn't in her face so that at 7:30am we can start family scripture study.

At 7:45am (five minutes late now), we have a prayer and I kick them out of the house. Then I sit on the couch and spend the next five or ten minutes involved in an intense inner dialogue about whether or not I really want to work out and how strenuous that work out should be.

Around 8:15am (I have to change clothes and what not), I actually start working out.

9:30am - I'm in the shower.

10:am  - I'm making my breakfast (tofu scramble anyone?) and my lunch (kale chips and a turkey-hummus sandwich). I also try to throw a load of laundry in the wash sometime during the morning.

10:30am (ish): I stroll into work and thank God, literally, for the benefits of being a bookkeeper for a small family business owned by the man who sired me (how mad could he ever get at his grown daughter?) and the man I'm sleeping with (how mad could he ever get at the one who puts out?) and then further milk their affections by playing games, reading blogs and checking email.  I did give up Facebook so that's one less thing.

11:15am: Walk home to pee. Change the laundry.

Somewhere in there I throw in a few hours of balancing books, finding money we didn't know we had to pay bills that we've known about for a little too long, sending out statements and paying taxes to one government or the other. If I'm feeling real virtuous, I might even walk the aforementioned doggies so my dad doesn't have to. I'm generous like that. (And there are usually one or two more trips home to pee. And change the laundry.)

3:00pm: I drive to town to pick up my three children from their various schools and head home. They have snack and I start frantically combing the kitchen for something that can be dinner within the next half hour. The rest evening is a whirl of karate, church activities, skating lessons, or staying home and folding all that laundry, depending on the day of the week.

9:00pm: Bed. So. Tired. I know people say that exercising gives you energy, but I think they lie. I could stay up MUCH later before I started working out.

The rest, as they say, is a matter of rinse and repeat, which never ceases to amaze me; that so many nothing, ordinary, routine days can add up to three children half grown, 13.5 years of marriage and my being middle aged. How did all this happen?!