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?

MORNING | I’m up a little before my alarm, snuggling Lila, so when it goes off at 7 a.m., I turn it off. And then I proceed to go back to sleep until 7:45. Oops! Eventually, I get up, pee, brush my teeth, feed the girls, and then sit down at my computer to finish up yesterday’s post. Afterward, I read a few blogs and then get my morning routine started. I do my morning skincare routine, make my bed, take my meds, and make breakfast. I also start a load of laundry. Around 9:30, I sit down at my desk to start work. But I am so unfocused this morning! Instead, I work on my budget, read some blogs, and scroll through Amazon for a while to look at their armchair selection. I get a call from my leasing office that maintenance needs access to my apartment to check for a leak my downstairs neighbor called in about. You guys, I was not ready for the maintenance man who showed up. He is beautiful and smells amazing. I need to have my tub unclogged at some point, but there is no way I can let him do that for me. I would be so embarrassed to have such a good-looking guy pulling hair out of my drain. SIGH. (Oh, and the leak issue is nothing to worry about as far as I know.) After all of that excitement, I finally get into work and decide it’s a Pomodoro kinda day. I use this productivity method when I’m feeling really unfocused because it keeps me on task, and I’m able to zip through a ton of to-dos this morning: working through some content assignments and reassignments, doing QA tasks, and writing a quick website page using ChatGPT. (Side note: Eloise is being super clingy this morning! She usually naps in the bedroom during the day, but she wants to be parked on the desk with me. I love a clingy cat so I make sure to give her lots of pets and kisses throughout the morning.)

AFTERNOON | My tummy is rumbling so I stop working to heat up lunch (leftovers from Tuesday night) and scroll through the Survivor Reddit forum while I do so to get everyone’s thoughts on last night’s episode. I Facetime with my mom about our plans tonight and then get back to work. I follow up with people on a bunch of overdue tasks and then put together my slide for our department meeting tomorrow. And then I decide it’s time to get out and take a walk, although it’s HOT today, ugh. Upper 80s with 52% humidity. I am not a fan! I pick up my mail at the end of my walk and I’m thrilled to see my Sephora package arrived. I ordered two new serums to try out. (I love The Ordinary products because they are so affordable!) And then it’s back to work for me. I clear out my inbox as much as I can and work through some QA tasks. I call it a day at 4:45. It was not my most productive day, but oh well.

NIGHT | I have my monthly dietician appointment and there is a lot to talk about! I won’t share all of the insights since I plan on writing a follow-up “Notes From My Dietician” post later this month, but it was a very helpful appointment. We talk about how to beef up my breakfast, how to improve my snacks so they are more satisfying, and lots more. Afterward, I read some blogs and tidy up the apartment a bit, and then it’s off to my mom’s house for the night! I get to her place around 7 p.m. and spend a lot of time letting the dogs kiss me. I love how excited they get to see me! My mom and I order Domino’s for dinner, which I haven’t had in a hot second, and it was really good! We watch the last 10 minutes of Jeopardy, and then it’s time for the real reason I came over: the Big Brother finale! We love this show and get obsessive about it while it’s on, and it was fun to watch it with her. I leave around 10 and start working on this post, reading blogs, and tidying up around the apartment. I also fold my laundry, but I’m too tired to put it away, so it’s a chore for tomorrow. I go to bed around 11:45 and watch ASMR videos until I’m falling asleep.

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

What’s your favorite protein-packed snack? I need ideas!

MORNING | My alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. and I have cats snuggled in on either side of me! I spend a lot of time snuggling with them as I slowly wake up. I finally get out of bed, pee, brush my teeth, feed the girls, and then sit on the couch for about 20 minutes reading my book and playing games on my phone. It’s such a calm way to start the day! At 8, I take a shower and then put on comfy clothes and brush out my hair. (No meetings today, which means I don’t have to worry about looking presentable! I do not do my hair every day; only on days I have a lot of meetings and/or have evening plans.) I do my morning skincare routine, take my meds, make my bed, and put away the dishes from last night. I make coffee and breakfast and then sit down to work right around 9. I go through my emails and send a Slack message to my boss, which prompts a 10-minute huddle between the two of us. Then, I put together a handful of content strategy plans and by the time I’m done with that, I just want a break, so I wash my breakfast dishes, check in on the girls, and play a few games on my phone.

AFTERNOON | I make lunch, which is leftovers from last night, so it’s a super easy meal to put together. I do today’s Duolingo lessons while everything is cooking up. I eat lunch and scroll through Reddit forums, like always. And then it’s back to work. I answer emails and then work through some QA tasks, which are very easy and allow me to listen to a podcast while I’m doing it. I love that! And then the afternoon slump hits me hard. But I don’t work in an office! I work from home and have a flexible job, so I take a siesta and Eloise curls up next to me, which is lovely. When I wake up, she wants to do somersaults all over the bed next to me, so we laze around a bit. And then it’s back to work: answering emails, more QA tasks, and another content strategy plan. I take some breaks to clean my bathroom and go for a walk right before it gets dark. When I get back from my walk, I finish up my workday by taking care of some client edits to a content plan and continuing my QA tasks. I wrap up for the day around 6:30.

NIGHT | I lose all motivation to do anything once I’m done with work, so I park myself on the couch for a good hour to read my book and play games on my phone. I should have started dinner, but instead, I opt to lump on the couch. Around 7:45, I finally get up and start dinner. It’s homemade nachos night! Yay! And it’s time for this week’s episode of Survivor. I eat dinner while watching Survivor and then sit on the couch to color for the rest of the show. Once Survivor is over, it’s time for this week’s episode of The Amazing Race so I continue to sit and color, although I do get up during the commercial breaks to clean the kitchen, scoop the litter boxes, and tidy the apartment. After the shows are done, I call my mom so we can debrief about the shows. It’s 11:30 when I hang up with her and I am too tired to do my skincare routine, so I skip it in favor of going right to bed.

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

Did you watch any TV shows yesterday?

MORNING | My alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. and the girls are being very cuddly with me, so I laze around in bed for a bit. I get up 20 minutes later and feed the girls. Then, I brush my teeth, pull my hair into a half-down/half-up style, and put on yoga pants with a nice shirt (the ultimate work-from-home uniform!). I sit on the couch to read my book and play some games on my phone. Around 8, I make myself get off the couch, do my morning skincare routine, take my meds, and make my breakfast. (I don’t make my bed today since Eloise has found herself a cozy spot on the bed and I don’t have the heart to make her move.) I’m sitting down to work right around 8:30. I spend the first part of my day answering emails, working on meeting notes, and editing a batch of content. And then I have a one-on-one meeting with my boss, which is very productive. Afterward, I exchange some messages with one of my colleagues and then decide I’m tired and want a nap. I take a 30-minute siesta on the couch and wake up to Ellie poking me with one of her claws because she needs to be petted.

AFTERNOON | After my nap, I make lunch and eat it while scrolling Reddit forums. And then it’s time to log into my weekly meeting with the other content managers. I always enjoy this meeting; it’s fun to chit-chat with the other managers (we’re all women, which helps!) and brainstorm solutions to some of the issues we all come across. I jump from that meeting to another one, this time with my fave coworker. Sometimes, we use this time to do work and sometimes, we need a venting session. Today, she needed to vent so that’s what we do. I’m able to get some work done during our call, like putting together a content strategy plan and answering some emails. Afterward, I take a break to put some chicken in the Crock-Pot (not sure if this will be dinner tonight or lunch tomorrow… we’ll see!) and take a short 15-minute walk outside. I was able to wear my hair down for the walk and didn’t feel like dying! We’re making progress with our weather. I get back to work after my walk and answer some Slack messages, go through my emails, and then start working on creating content briefs for a client. We’re trying to figure out the word count for this specific project so we can accurately resource plan with our content team. I also call into a town hall, but since I only have to listen, I’m able to continue my work. A few hours later, I am finished with the content briefs. Yay! I clear out my inbox before shutting down for the night.

NIGHT | I feed the girls and then get my own dinner ready! Thankfully, my chicken is all done even though I threw it in the Crock-Pot later than I intended. I shred the chicken (salsa chicken – easiest recipe: just throw in chicken and salsa into the Crock-Pot and let it cook for a few hours) and then make corn and rice. I throw it all in a bowl together and eat it while reading blogs. It’s a tasty meal for sure, and I’ll have leftovers for lunch for the next few days. Once I’m finished with dinner, I take a bubble bath and then sit on the couch to read for a bit. Lila comes up to me for pets so I multitask! Eventually, I get up from the couch so I can do my nighttime routine, work on this post, and read some blogs. (I’m trying my best to keep up!) I also clean up the kitchen, which is a bit of a wreck from the day. By the time all is said and done, it’s 11pm and I am very tired. I read just a chapter of my novel before turning on an ASMR video to lull me to sleep.

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

What’s one of your fave easy meals?