My alarm goes off at 7 a.m. and almost immediately, I recognize that I’ve got some serious muscle soreness from yesterday’s workout. Like, did you know everytime you play with your hair, whether you’re flipping it over your shoulder or tucking it behind your ears, you use your triceps? I do now because everytime I try to do anything with my hair, my triceps scream at me. My trapezius muscles are also unhappy with me. I guess yesterday’s workout was a good one!

Once I’m up, I feed the girls and then sit on the couch playing my NYT games. Then, it’s time to get ready for the day. I do my morning skincare routine, tidy the apartment, take my meds, get dressed, and do my hair. I also pack up my backpack for today. Around 8:25, I’m out the door and driving to Starbucks to meet Mikaela for a writing date. When she arrives, we spend the first 10-15 minutes venting about the election. We both needed that for sure.

Then, we get to work. She works on her book and I finish up yesterday’s post, publish it, and start on today’s post. Around 10:45, we stop working and Mikaela reads what she’s written today. As always, it’s incredible! She’s written 71,000 words of her book and she’s close to the end. Eeks!

I leave Starbucks a little after 11 a.m. and take Ruby to the gas station for her first fill-up! (Well, from me, anyway.) What a beautiful milestone.

Then, it’s off to Target! I go directly to the pharmacy so I can get my flu and Covid shots. They don’t hurt at all and now we wait and hope I don’t have a reaction. I take my $5 off $20 coupon that Target is giving to everyone who gets their flu shot and then do some shopping. I have a headache and don’t have any ibuprofen with me, so I pick up some Advil (as well as Tylenol so I can start dosing myself as a preventive measure. Does this work? I have no idea, but every since I started doing this, I haven’t had any reactions from the shots.) I meander over to the books section because this is my deal with myself: If I get my flu and Covid shots, I can pick out two books. I’m happy with my choices!

I meander around Target for a little while longer, but I stay far away from the Christmas section because I’m scared of what will happen to me if I do. (Chaos, that’s what.) I pick up a bag of cheddar and caramel popcorn to munch on, and then pay for my things and head out. This could have been a much more dangerous visit to Target so I’ll take what I can get.

I drive to Tampa for my haircut appointment and I eat the popcorn on the way there. I’m also drinking an orange soda. This is my very healthy and balanced lunch, by the way. I’m here for all of your nutritional advice needs.

My hair salon is in the very cute Hyde Park Village, which is one of my favorite areas of Tampa. It’s this cute little spot that has tons of shops and restaurants. After parking, I’m happy to find that the salon is only a five-minute walk away.

My hair appointment goes well! I really like the stylist (we bond over the fact that both of our cars flooded during Helene, sigh) and it feels so good to chop off my split ends. She takes about 4 inches off, which is exactly what I wanted. She also adds some long layers and trims my bangs. I feel lighter and happier after leaving the salon! (Side note: I also noticed a sign on every mirror in the salon that said, “We will not discuss politics. Please respect the privacy of our staff.” Interesting!)

After my hair appointment, I stop into Paper Source to poke around. I was hoping to find a few Christmas gifts, but nothing really caught my eye (well, aside from the tuxedo cat LEGO set that I really want, but I’m not willing to spend $100 on that) so I leave without buying anything. And then I head back home! It has been a busy Saturday already.

Once home, I give the girls some treats for being alone for so long (the travesty!) and then get into comfy clothes and settle down in my bed. I set an alarm and take a wonderful two-hour nap. When I wake up, I see that my brother has texted me: They adopted a dog today! Her name is Cici and she’s a golden retriever and I cannot WAIT to meet her!

I laze around in bed for a while and eventually get up, feed the girls, and leave to go to the grocery store. Nothing exciting to report here! I put things in my cart, pay for the things, and drive home. Easy-peasy.

I put away the food that needs to be refrigerated and then sit on the couch to play some phone games. My mom Facetimesme and we chat for a while, and once I hang up with her, I start making dinner. It’s another homemade nachos night! I eat dinner while watching this week’s episode of The Floor, which is a game show I am currently obsessed with (and not just because Rob Lowe hosts it). When I finish the episode, I Facetime my mom again because I forgot to talk about a few things during our last phone call. We chat for a while and when we hang up, I sit down at my laptop to read/comment on blogs and work on this post. Then, I take a bubble bath, which was very nice! Afterward, I sit down on the couch and start to read my book, but I have been feeling “meh” about it so I decide to abandon it. Onto the next one!

And then I scroll through social media a bit (mostly Reels, and the algorithm has been beautifully curated to show me mostly dachshund videos and cat videos) and then I’m feeling tired so I decide to abandon all semblance of a nighttime routine and go right to bed. Oops.

saturday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

I sleep like crap. It takes me a long time to fall asleep and then I just feel like I wake up frequently throughout the night and can’t ever seem to get comfortable. Is it existential dread? My terrible nighttime routine this week? Just a bad night? I don’t know.

My alarm goes off at 5:25 a.m., and I am very unhappy about it. I snuggle with Lila for a few minutes and then get up and get ready for the gym. By 5:45, I’m out the door. Today, I signed up for a 6 a.m. HIIT class and I’m very sad when I arrive and my usual instructor isn’t there. The sub for the class is fine, but I find some of the workout to be repetitive. (In this HIIT class, we have 7 different stations and then in between every station, we do a 60-second cardio round and a 45-second core round. We did so many sit-ups during the core round and the cardio rounds were a bit lackluster. Meh.)

I leave the gym around 6:45, place an order at Einstein’s, and am happy when it’s ready to go when I arrive. And then it’s home sweet home! I feed the girls, eat breakfast, finish up yesterday’s post, and then read a few blogs before getting my workday started.

My morning flies by in a flurry of emails, content editing, and Salesforce mumbo-jumbo. I take a few breaks: once to clean and vacuum the kitchen and once to dump out my shredder so I can shred a whole stack of mail and bills and such that have come in over the past few weeks. Oh, and I get a call from my *new* psychiatrist because she needs to reschedule my appointment. She tells me these intake appointments usually take 60-90 minutes but Zocdoc always schedules them for 30 minutes. There’s also a whole bunch of intake paperwork that I must have missed and I need to fill out. We set up a time for the intake appointment next week.

Around 11:15, I order lunch and then schedule an appointment to get my Covid and flu shot. There’s lots of availability so I select a time tomorrow afternoon. (For the past two years, I’ve gotten both shots at the same time and only experience a bit of arm soreness. Let’s hope that’s true for this shot!) While I’m waiting for my food to arrive, I hear a knock at my door. But it’s not my food! It’s my Book of the Month box! I haven’t ordered anything from BOTM in a few months but November is my birthday month, which means I get a free book. So I bought four books this month because I have no chill.

Once my food arrives, I do a bit of work and then wrap up my workday while I’m eating lunch. (I usually work a little longer on Fridays, but this week has been shit and I slept terribly and I just need some rest.)

After lunch, I take a two-hour nap, which was so rejuvenating. I scroll through Slack messages and emails when I get up, but there’s nothing pressing I need to respond to. Yay! I clean up a bit around my apartment, vacuum my living areas, and wipe down my bathroom. I have some friends coming over tonight and there’s nothing like people being in my apartment to inspire me to clean, ha.

Around 2:45, I leave and head to my mom’s house. They are meeting with someone about putting solar panels on their home, and she wanted me to be there to ask questions. (Since my brother and I would get their house in the will, I like to joke that all house upgrades need to be approved by us. For example, when my mom and stepdad got a new fridge recently, I said, “Did Mark (my brother) approve this purchase?” I’m a delight, I know.)

Anyway, the solar panel consultation is a long one but the salesguy is very thorough and helpful, answering all of our questions easily. He’s not super pushy, either, which is much appreciated. Their house is in a good location for solar panels, except for one part of their roof that gets a bit more shade than is advisable (they’d need to cut back a big oak tree that’s in their neighbor’s yard). They schedule a site inspection for tomorrow. Fingers crossed for them! (And for me and my brother, har har har.)

I return home a little after 5 p.m. and sit on the couch, playing on my phone, while I wait for my friends to arrive. I also order Domino’s for dinner – we are obsessed with their hand-tossed pizza and cheesy bread. Yum! Amber and Katie arrive right around 6 p.m. and the pizza is delivered shortly afterward. We eat while chit-chatting and then we get down to business and the real reason they are here: dyeing my hair! My friends did a fabulous job on the color, as always, and once I had rinsed out the dye, we all celebrated with bundtinis! I had a delicious red velvet bundtini that hit the spot.

Afterward, we all headed out to a local bar to get some drinks. Aside from a very drunk man who may have been in a relationship and was trying to pick up my friend, it was a fun night. (Don’t worry – we made it clear we wanted him to leave and he did.) We had two drinks ($11 total with tip!) And my friends also tried to get me to talk to a guy I thought was cute, but I was way too shy to do that. Maybe one day I can be brave enough to chat up someone in a bar, but last night was not that night.

We left the bar a little before 11 and then Katie came back up to my apartment because she needed a few more minutes to loaf before she was ready to drive home. We mostly scrolled on our phones but also talked a bit about chatting up people in bars. The key is to not have any expectations and not care about being rejected. It’s always my worst fear that I’ll start talking to someone and they’ll be like, “Ew, gross, get away from me,” which is not likely to happen (or so my friends tell me). It was an educational night!

Katie left around 11:15 and I Facetimed my mom. We talked for about 20 minutes but I was very tired so I don’t think I was much of a conversationalist! When we hung up, it was quickly to bed for me!

friday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

My alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. and Lila is snuggling with me. I had taken off my CPAP mask earlier in the night because it was bugging me (I have to wear it for at least 4 hours a night, and sometimes I try just to hit that threshold). We snuggle for a good 15 minutes. She kisses my hand and gnaws on my finger and lets me pet her belly. It’s a very good snuggle sesh!

I get up around 7:15, feed the girls, and then sit on the couch to play Duolingo and my NYT games. Around 7:45, I get up to make breakfast and coffee—something easy today, just oatmeal. While I eat breakfast, I scroll through the Reddit forum for The Summit. Yep, we’re all frustrated by this show!

I do my morning routine (the whole thing today, even skincare!) and halfway through, my mom Facetimes me to chat about Survivor (she wasn’t able to watch it last night, but watched it this morning). We chat for a few minutes. Then I make the mistake of scrolling through Instagram and get caught up in some comment threads. Don’t do this, you guys. It’s not worth it. Eventually, I make myself get up to finish my morning routine and then it’s time to work.

I spend a few hours working and I’m surprisingly productive. It’s nice when I can compartmentalize work life vs what’s going on in the world. I take a break around 11:15 to give the girls some treats and take a short walk to pick up my mail. And it’s a very good mail day! I get a check from Bank of America, the company that held my loan for Gladys (my car that got flooded during Hurricane Helene), because I overpaid on my loan. It’s a nice chunk of change, too! And I get two postcards – one from Birchie and one from both Kyria and Elisabeth!

I’m not yet hungry for lunch so I decide to work a little more. I clear out my emails, do a bit of editing, and QA posted content. And then I get completely absorbed in the task of checking on our writers’ assignments. I do this a couple times a month to make sure their numbers match up to what I originally assigned to them at the end of the previous month. Sometimes things get wonky – like the writer who suddenly had 20 pages more than I originally planned for him to have! Whoops. I quickly fix that. I start getting hungry around 12:30 but I’m focused on this task and want to get it done before I stop for lunch… and it’s not until 12:50 that I remember I have a 1pm meeting. I’m not going to have time to eat lunch before the meeting so I’m gonna be really hungry.

Oh, well – not much I can do about it! The 1pm meeting is to introduce our new senior director (aka, my new boss!) to our content team. It’s a great meeting, although I cringe a little when our writers have to introduce themselves and “say a fun fact.” They do a good job, though! Once the meeting is over, I immediately eat lunch! I am definitely having a blood sugar drop—I am a little shaky and feel very warm. Thankfully, my lunch is an easy one: I picked up a Pub sub last night and saved half of it for lunch today. I just have to grab the sub, some chips, and a Dr. Pepper and I’m good to go. I eat lunch while scrolling through Survivor’s Reddit forum.

I have another meeting at 2pm, but it’s just an information session about our 2025 benefits. I listen in while working on this post and doing some easy work tasks. I’m not happy about the changes, especially because it seems they’re just removing some benefits without putting anything new or better in their place. Great. Once the meeting is over, I work for a little bit and then decide I need a short siesta. I take a 30-minute nap on the couch.

I do a little more work before I need to hop into a meeting, which is a pretty good brainstorming session with other managers. We’re trying to resource plan, which is hard when there are parameters we’re dealing with. But we do the best with what we have! It’s a good meeting, though, and when it’s over, I realize I have just a few minutes before my therapy appointment!

I’ve been both looking forward to this appointment and dreading it. Mostly dreading it because talking to someone new + describing my emotions out loud + dealing with the hard things = not my fave thing. But I know I need this appointment and the timing feels serendipitous.

The therapy appointment goes really well! I like her a lot, even more when she tells me she voted for Harris so at least I know she understands my sense of despair. She also gives me some tangible things to do when I’m having a panic attack, which I appreciate. From therapy, I have learned the why behind my panic attacks but not the coping skills to implement when they happen. Hopefully, they help! And hopefully, I don’t need to use them anytime soon.

After therapy, I lay on my bed for a bit, scrolling social media (which was not a smart decision) and the girls come up on the bed for cuddles, which I very much appreciate. Eventually, I get up, feed them dinner, and take a bubble bath. I order dinner while in the bath and also play some games on my phone. Out of the bath, I sit on the couch and read my book until my dinner arrives.

Grooming session

When it comes, I eat at the table with my laptop, scrolling through Reddit forums and blogs.

I turn on the Thursday Night Football game and watch it off and on while reading my book. My mom Facetimes me and we chat for a while. When I hang up with her, I finish my book and then come back to my laptop to work on this post, read/comment on blogs, and respond to blog comments. And then I’m not really sure what I do with the rest of my evening, other than tidying up the apartment, playing games on my phone, and watching the TNF game. But suddenly it’s 11:30 and I need to go to bed! My nighttime routine is shit this week.

thursday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

I wake up at 3 a.m., grab my phone, and pull up CNN. Trump won. I can’t believe this is happening. What is wrong with our country?

It takes me a while to fall back to sleep, but eventually, I do and I wake up again around 6:45 and remember what happened. Today is going to be a bad day. The next four years will be a slew of bad days. I send the famous Michael Scott “please God no” GIF to my book club group chat because that’s just about how I feel right now.

Eventually, my bladder tells me I need to get up so I deal with that and feed the girls. Then I sit on the couch to play Duolingo, my NYT games, and Happy Color. I also read a few chapters of my book, which is my first time reading this week! (Very abnormal.)

Around 8, I force myself to make breakfast (scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage) and eat it while finishing up yesterday’s post. Once that’s published, I do an abbreviated morning routine (I skip the skincare—brush my teeth, get dressed, clean up the kitchen, deal with my CPAP machine, and take my meds) and then it’s time to work. I think??? Work feels impossible on a day like today.

But work I do. I clear out my email, edit content, do some posting, and handle some small to-dos that resulted from my leadership meeting yesterday. I was supposed to have a meeting with my team today but I’m not in the headspace for that so I move it to next week.

Around 10:45 my mom calls me to ask if I want to do a volunteer shift with her for Feeding America Tampa Bay. Well, this feels like something positive that I can do this month when things feel as depressing as they do today. We sign up to do a morning and afternoon shift next Wednesday. Then, we make plans for lunch.

I do a little more work when I hang up the phone with my mom and then drive over to our favorite local deli for lunch. I order my usual (turkey sammie on a croissant) and it hits the spot. My mom and I don’t talk much during lunch, which sometimes happens. We’re both thinking about a lot of things (we also got some distressing news about a family member earlier today, so it’s been a double whammy of terribleness) but we’re together and sometimes that’s what we need.

I get home from lunch a little after noon, work on this post, and then dive into a mindless work task. It’s exactly what I need.

I take a short nap when I finish my work task and it feels very nice to turn my brain off for a little while. Eloise spent the entire naptime with me, so when I wake up, I give her cuddles and she meows like crazy at me. Maybe she can sense I need a little extra love today? Before I get back to work, I scroll through my personal email and see that a package has arrived! It’s Sephora – I ordered some skincare products.

The rest of my workday goes pretty smoothly. I write some content that’s due this week but we haven’t been able to assign to writers. I post some content, answer emails, and handle some assignment issues that crop up. At some point, I pull out my snack pack to munch on and I also take a few breaks to read and comment on blogs.

Around 5:15, I wrap up my workday. I get ready for the gym, feed the girls, and then spend 10 minutes trying to find where I placed my Zevo replacement filters but they are nowhere to be found. WHY! I have no idea where they could be because I feel like I looked everywhere. But I’ll have to continue looking later because I need to leave.

My first stop this evening is Target to pick up a curbside order. Nothing exciting here – just household essentials like toilet paper, laundry pods, and distilled water. It’s a quick pit stop and then I’m on my way to the gym for HIIT class. Except I can never time these before-class errands correctly because I am a whole half-hour early. What I should do is go into the gym and do a short cardio workout. But what I do instead is sit in my car, playing games on my phone and reading blogs. I’ll get enough cardio during HIIT class.

A little before 6:30, I walk into the gym for HIIT class. And it’s a good one! I feel really strong during this workout – and I surprise myself by picking up the 20-lb weights for some of the stations. (At one point, I picked up one of the 20-lb weights and was like, “Oh, this isn’t as heavy as I thought!”) It feels good to see progress like that.

I leave the gym around 7:15, take a quick pit stop at Publix, and then drive home. It’s a struggle carrying all of my stuff up the stairs, but I get it done even though my heart is racing. I put away the food that needs to be refrigerated and then take a shower. Right as I’m finishing up my shower, it’s 8pm so I pull up my Paramount+ app to start streaming tonight’s episode of Survivor. I put on pajamas, brush out my hair, and then sit down on my couch to turn on Survivor on my TV. I eat my dinner while watching the show. Once the show is over, it’s time for The Summit. This new show on CBS isn’t my favorite (mostly because the contestants are very dumb), but it’s something mindless to watch on Wednesday evenings. While that show is on, I make cookies, work on this post, and respond to blog comments.

Once the show is over, I Facetime my mom and we talk about the show and other chit-chatty things. Then I pick up around my apartment, do an abbreviated nighttime routine, and finally go to bed around midnight.

wednesday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014

I considered not publishing this post today. The bad thing did happen, and Trump was elected. I am still trying to process this news while feeling despair in the pit of my stomach. In the end, maybe you need something to read that isn’t depressing news about the future of the U.S. So that’s what I’m bringing you today.

***

My alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. I take off my CPAP mask and turn off the machine, which is Lila’s cue to hop on the bed for morning snuggles. And then Eloise joins in on the fun! A great way to start today.

After one snooze of my alarm, I get up, feed the girls, and then sit on the couch for about 15 minutes playing phone games. Eventually, I get up to take a shower and then I sit down at my laptop to finish up yesterday’s post before doing my morning routine. Skincare, CPAP maintenance, emptying out the dishwasher, meds, etc. I also brush out my hair and bangs to let them air dry. Then, I make a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast and eat it while reading and commenting on blogs. I make coffee, straighten my bangs, and put on eyebrow pencil/mascara since I have a few meetings today and need to look somewhat presentable.

Around 9, I sit down at my desk to start my workday, but before I can get anything done, there’s a knock at my door. It’s someone from maintenance to knock down the wasp nest that’s on my patio. WOOHOO! I noticed this huge wasp nest back in September and finally put in a maintenance request about it yesterday. The maintenance man made quick work of the nest and now I can go out on my patio again without fearing for my life. (I should be nicer to the wasps. They never really did anything. They were just living their lives in the nest they created, but I just needed them to have created it elsewhere.)

Now it’s finally time to work! I’m able to clear out my inbox, make some notes for this morning’s meeting, and edit a few pages of content before it’s time for my weekly leadership meeting. As always, there is a lot to discuss but it’s a productive meeting. I get some of my questions answers, so I leave the meeting feeling pretty good.

After the meeting, I get up from my desk and the girls think that means it must be time for treats. They get a handful of Temptations while I preheat my oven. I’m going to make a lunch of popcorn chicken, rice, and green beans since my original plan of Monday dinner leftovers didn’t pan out. Then I lay on the couch and decide to see if I can book a psychiatry appointment without calling my psychiatrist. (I’m a millennial stereotype, I know.) I can’t so I decide to look on Zocdoc for a new psychiatrist. LOL. Okay, I know this sounds like a huge overreaction but I had been thinking about looking for a new psychiatrist. and this was the push I needed to do that. I find someone who is on my insurance and accepting patients and she has lots of availability. Awesome! I schedule an appointment for Friday morning.

And since that felt so easy, I decide to also see if I could find a therapist on Zocdoc. I use Zocdoc a lot, but have never used it to find a therapist. One of the therapists I found seemed like a great fit for me but she only had availability this week and then nothing for the next few months. While I hadn’t planned to restart therapy this soon, I didn’t want to let this opportunity pass me by so I booked an appointment for Thursday at 5:15 p.m. Better start figuring out how to tell my life story to another therapist!

My oven was preheated so I pop the chicken in the oven and start working on this post. Then I do a bit of work before cooking the rest of my lunch. I eat while scrolling Reddit and then clean up the kitchen and feed the girls their lunch. Oh, and I also find out that my period started! Lovely. A perfect way to celebrate election day.

It’s back to work for me. During this working block, I prep meeting notes, answer emails and Slack messages, and then have a 30-minute meeting with some of our editors. Afterward, I start working through the intake paperwork my *new* therapist sent me and then my mom calls me! We chat for a bit and when I get off the phone, I decide to take a nap. Listen, it’s the first day of my period, I’m stressed about the election, and I went to bed late. I’m going to give my body the rest it needs.

When I wake up from my nap, I grab my snack pack from the fridge and do another hour-and-a-half of work. I opt for some easy tasks like editing content, posting content, and assigning out some ad-hoc requests that have come in. At 5:30, I call it a day and get ready to go to the gym. On my drive, I send a Marco Polo video to Mikaela.

My workout is a good one! I do the cardio machines – 15 minutes on the elliptical, 15 minutes on the treadmill, and 15 minutes on the stationary bike. My mom is taking the Tuesday night HIIT class and I can watch her progress since the cardio machines are situated right next to the room where they do HIIT. I’m not a huge fan of this HIIT instructor, which is why I didn’t take the class and when my mom finishes her workout and comes out to see me, she expresses frustration with him, too. (This is not our usual HIIT instructor whom we love!) I finish up my workout and Mom and I leave the gym together. I go with her to her car so she can give me a bag of stuff I left at her house on Sunday.

Then I drive home and sit on the couch for 20 minutes. My book club group text is going wild so I leave some messages, check in on some election results for Florida (mostly bad), and then make dinner. While it’s cooking, I work on this post, read/comment on blogs, and respond to comments. I do the same while eating dinner! (I am not watching any election coverage tonight. My heart can’t take it.) Once I finish eating, I’m reading blogs and Eloise decides to jump up on the table next to me and bug me. She bumps her head with my hand, puts her butt in front of my face, and pokes me with a claw. Okay, girl! You need some attention. I get out a new teaser and play with the girls for about 10 minutes. That’s two days of playtime in a row! These girls don’t know what to do with all of this attention.

After playtime, I take a bubble bath and spend far too long trying to solve today’s Wordle. (It took me 6 tries, but I was not going to be defeated!) My mom Facetimes me so we talk for about a half-hour. Once I hang up with her, I finish up my NYT games for the day and then get started on my nighttime routine. It’s an abbreviated routine tonight because I didn’t feel like doing my skincare routine. Instead, I tidy up my apartment, start the dishwasher, brush my teeth, and scoop the litter boxes. I also take breaks to read/comment on blogs and work on this post.

Around 11:30, I’m finally in bed. I scroll through some election coverage on CNN and my stomach is in knots when I learn that Trump has won Michigan and is leading in Pennsylvania. This is not good. I decide I just need to go to bed and get the results in the morning. I have a very hard time falling asleep.

tuesday in the life: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014