MORNING | No alarm this morning, so today my bladder wakes me up at 8:30. I attempt to go back to bed after attending to it, but no dice. I get up, feed the girls, and then sit on the couch to read for a bit. Then, I take a shower, get dressed, start a load of laundry, and make myself coffee and a bowl of cereal for breakfast. It’s a little after 10 by the time I’m finishing up breakfast, so I wash out my bowl, brush my teeth, brush out my hair, and take care of a few tasks around the apartment. By 11:00, I’m out the door for the day. First, I stop at Publix to pick up a prescription and then I pick up my mom. We head to TJ Maxx to check out their Christmas decorations. I only buy TWO holiday signs, which is honestly impressive for me. (Will hold for applause.) Then, we’re off to Publix for grocery shopping! We always go to Publix on Sunday before football to get the supplies we need for the day. (I always get a Pub sub for lunch, and we make a dessert.) Lately, I’ve been doing my weekly grocery shopping during this trip. It’s crowded and busy at this time, so it can often make me shake my fist at humanity, but I get it done somehow.

AFTERNOON | My mom and I arrive home right around 12:40 and put away our groceries (I store my groceries in her fridge/freezer until I go home). Then, I sit on the couch for dog snuggles. Right around 1:00, my brother and older nephew arrive and I make such a rookie mistake when letting them in (keeping the door open too long) and Lucy and Chip take off running. They’ve been getting better about not escaping from the house, but today was not that day. Thankfully, they just ran around the yard for a bit and my mom was able to get them inside with the promise of treats. Hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do! The rest of the afternoon is wonderfully low-key! I eat my sub and then settle into an armchair to watch the games. I read a bit of my book, scroll through Etsy and Amazon for Christmas gift ideas, chat with my family, eat some very good cookies, and enjoy copious dog snuggles. My team is not playing this week, so my stress level is at zero, which is a nice change! Instead, I cheer on my brother’s team (the 49ers) and watch some kinda blah games.

NIGHT | I hang out at my mom’s until 7:45 p.m., and then I take all of my groceries and head home. The girls are happy to see me (and to get dinner!). I unpack my groceries and then sit on the couch with my book and the Sunday Night Football game in the background. I munch on a bag of popcorn and I’m surprised that the game keeps my attention. Throughout the evening, I work on this post, fold laundry, read some blogs, do my skincare routine, brush my teeth, and tidy up the apartment. It’s only when I think I’m done with everything and can finally go to bed that I realize I forgot to scoop the litter boxes. Dang it! Even though I want to delay that task until the morning, I know I need to get it done tonight so I do so. Now it’s after midnight when I’m finally getting into bed and I’m going to be a sleepy girl tomorrow!

sunday in the life: 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

Be honest: How much do my late bedtimes make you cringe? What I have learned the most from documenting a week in my life is that I have to get into a better nighttime routine. Argh!

MORNING | I wake up one minute before my alarm is set to go off (at 7:30 a.m.). I had really weird dreams last night and I feel unsettled. I feed the girls and then sit on the couch to read my book before it’s time to get ready for the day. I brush my hair into a ponytail, get dressed, brush my teeth, take my meds, and then do a very simple makeup routine (eyebrows and mascara). By 8:40, I’m out the door. I take a quick pit stop at my apartment’s trash compactor to drop off some boxes. (We have a valet trash program, in which we just put our trash right outside our door on specified nights and a company will pick it up, but they don’t take boxes so I always have to take those to the trash compactor myself.) And then I drive to Starbucks for my weekly writing date with Mikaela! At Starbucks, I order a peppermint mocha and a blueberry muffin, and then we chit-chat for a bit before diving into our work. Mikaela works on her book and I do some blog recategorization work and also answer blog comments. Near the end of our date, Mikaela reads aloud what she wrote and, as always, it is excellent! Afterward, she leaves but I stick around for another half-hour to finish up what I was doing.

AFTERNOON | After my writing date, I zip over to my mom’s house to pick her up. We have a fun afternoon planned! First, we drive over to Tampa to pick up a Christmas present for my brother. It was one of those weird gifts that wasn’t available for shipping but could be picked up in-store. Then, we had lunch at World of Beer where I sipped on a delightful caramel apple cider. It tasted like grown-up apple juice and had this delightful caramel aftertaste. Yum! After that, we ventured over to the mall for some pre-vacation shopping. We need some cold-weather essentials. I didn’t buy much (a very cozy sweater and a beanie from Old Navy), but it was a pretty successful outing nonetheless. I was dragging by the time we were finishing up at the mall and was excited to take a nap when I got home. I dropped Mom off at her house and when I got home, I shucked off my pants and bra and immediately jumped into my bed. YAY! I read a few chapters of my novel and then set an alarm for 6pm. And then I drifted off into dreamland.

NIGHT | I woke up right around the time my alarm was set to go off and the girls are ready for dinner. I feed them and then start a bubble bath for myself. It’s warm and soothing and I play Happy Color on my phone while I sit in the bath. When I’m done, I preheat the oven and pop in a frozen pizza, and while it cooks, I sit on the couch and read my book. I eat while scrolling Reddit and reading blogs. And then I tidy up the apartment and have an ice cream treat before deciding it’s time to paint my nails. (Side note: Nicole recommended the Sally Hansen gel top coat, and it is just as amazing as she says it is! I can get almost two weeks out of my nails if I use a gel polish, which is insane to me.) I work on this post as I paint my nails and halfway through, my mom calls me. We chat for a bit and when we hang up, my nails are done and I’m ready for bed. I finish up this post, brush my teeth, and hop into bed right around 11:30. Time for a few chapters of my book and then ASMR videos to relax me to sleep.

saturday in the life: 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

When was the last time you went to the mall? (I rarely go these days!)

MORNING | My alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. and I find Eloise sleeping on my stomach and Lila snoozing on the pillow next to me. The perfect way to wake up! I snooze my alarm, we snuggle, and eventually, I get out of bed. I feed the girls, take a shower, get dressed, and then sit on the couch for 20 minutes playing Happy Color on my phone. Oops. I drive to McDonald’s for breakfast (a sausage egg McMuffin is my all-time favorite breakfast) and then come home to eat it while scrolling through Big Brother Reddit forums. I’m interested in everyone’s thoughts on the finale! I edit and publish yesterday’s post and then it’s time to get my workday started. I go through emails and handle some QA tasks, which take up a good amount of time. Then, I take a break to do my hair and put on some makeup since I have a few meetings today. (Unusual for a Friday—I really like to be a slob on Fridays, wah.) In the middle of getting ready, I hear a knock at my door and I’m annoyed thinking it’s maintenance again about this supposed leak. But it is not. Instead, it is a woman who needs access to my balcony because her daughter’s pet bird escaped and is on my windowsill. I am not making this up. The bird ended up flying off my windowsill and into a nearby tree, so she went back downstairs. (These women were sitting under this tree for HOURS trying to call the bird to get it to fly down. I felt so bad for them! How do you get a pet bird down from a tree?! I don’t know.) Anyway, I finished getting ready right in time for our monthly content team meeting. The meeting is a long one, mostly because we have a lot of Q&A questions to answer and a lot of info we need to provide to the team about our Salesforce migration. Because we took so long on those items, we have to rush through some of the other slides, which includes the slide I worked on yesterday. But it means I don’t have to present and I’m not mad about that! After our content team meeting, I jump right into another meeting to get some clarification on Salesforce questions. During that meeting, I order Subway for lunch through Ubereats.

AFTERNOON | My second meeting ends right around the time my lunch arrives, and I have to jump into my third meeting of the day. Thankfully, it’s a webinar so I only have to listen. I’m able to chow down on lunch and then play Happy Color on my phone while I listen. I get a killer headache during this meeting for some reason, so I take ibuprofen but I waited a bit too long to take medicine because I start feeling nauseous and terrible. So I jump off the webinar a little early to lay down. Bliss. I sleep for about two hours and when I wake up, I have a cat on either side of me! Adorable. I hop back online to answer some Slack messages that came in while I was napping and then clear out my inbox before the weekend. At 3:15, I’m headed out because today’s my LASIK follow-up appointment. It’s been three weeks since my procedure and things are healing perfectly. I thought this would be a quick appointment so I didn’t bring reading material with me (rookie mistake!) and I wind up waiting for longer than I expected. Thankfully, there are plenty of phone games to keep my attention. I meet with the ophthalmologist who tells me I have 20/20 vision and answers all of my questions. (I’m still seeing starbursts/halos when I drive at night and I am ready for that to get better, ugh.) I schedule another follow-up for late February and then I’m headed home.

NIGHT | As I’m driving home, my mom texts me to ask about the appointment and then to see if I want to get dinner with her. My plans for tonight were going to be popping a frozen pizza in the oven and catching up on NaBloPoMo posts, but spending time with my mom is something I can’t turn down! I pick her up from her house and we go to Bonefish Grill for dinner. I’m not a seafood fan, but their bread is so good that I’d go there solely for that. But, thankfully, they also have non-seafood options. We both order steaks and get very much wrapped up in the story the woman at the table next to us is telling about the time she went to urgent care and they told her she needed to go to the ER immediately. (Turns out, she needed her appendix removed.) After dinner, we do some shopping! First, we stop into Bath & Body Works because their candles are BOGO and I have a $10 off coupon. I can’t pass that up. I got four of their three-wick candles for $44 (two candles will be given as Christmas gifts). We won’t talk about how much my mom spent, but let’s just say they had to get out the BIG bag for her. Mama loves her holiday scents! After our foray into B&BW, we go into Target. I’m a little disappointed in their holiday selection this year. (Okay, except for the Hannukah-themed calendar for cats. I texted this photo to Bri and told her how badly I wished she had cats.) There’s nothing that really grabs me, but honestly, that’s okay because I have enough signs and garland and decorations. I don’t really need more! I only end up buying a small ornament and a package of Snickers trees, which are probably my all-time favorite holiday candy. I drop my mom off at her house and head back home to mine. The rest of my night is very low-key! I clean up the apartment, scoop the litter boxes, read/comment on some blogs, and work on this post. I have to skip my skincare routine for the second night in a row because I don’t have any clean washcloths. (Argh – I meant to do my washcloths/towels laundry today but time got away from me.) I hop into bed around 11, intent on getting at least some reading done tonight.

friday in the life: 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

How would YOU get a pet bird out of a tree?