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

It’s time for Week in the Life! Originally, I was going to wait to do this series until a little further into November but I decided I needed it this week. The week where we will find out what the U.S. will look like for the next four years. So let’s do this!

It’s Monday and my alarm wakes me up at 7 a.m. I like to complain about the “fall back” time change, but I do love how it makes it a bit easier to wake up in the mornings since my body thinks it’s an hour later. Once my alarm goes off, I snooze it, tear off my CPAP mask, and turn off the machine. (Only one event per hour last night – woop!) The girls come up on the bed, which I like to pretend is because they want morning cuddles, but most likely it’s because they want breakfast.

I get up around 7:15 a.m., use the bathroom, and then get the girls their breakfast. I start a load of laundry and then I make breakfast. Today, it’s two fried eggs, two pieces of toast, and sausage. And coffee, of course.

I sit down at my kitchen table, open my laptop, and read some blogs while I eat breakfast and drink my coffee. A perfect way to ease into Monday!

I start my morning routine right around 8 a.m., which includes my five-step morning skincare routine, taking meds, filling up my water bottle, and doing tasks associated with my CPAP machine (wiping down my mask and rinsing out my humidifier). I also transfer the clothes into the dryer, start my dishwasher (since I didn’t do it the night before, oops), and do a little tidying around the apartment.

Before sitting down to work, I go outside for my 10 minutes of sunshine! There is this beautiful lake view right outside my apartment but nowhere to sit, wah. I spot a blue heron hanging out by the lake and apparently that’s a symbol of good luck. Hopefully, that bodes well for this week!

Around 9:00, I’m back home and Eloise has a lot of questions for me. (Meows on meows!) I sit down at my desk and turn on my laptop. It’s time to get the workday started!

It’s a fairly easy morning for me. I don’t have any meetings today so I’m able to work on my own to-do list and get things done. I manage our contractor program and that takes up the bulk of my work. We have five contractors (but one of them is managed by someone else, which is super helpful!) and I’m responsible for their assignments, answering their questions, sending their content to clients, and making sure their content gets added to our clients’ websites. I spend the majority of my morning working through some of their tasks, like sending and publishing content. I also work on a report I send to our writers every Monday morning, clear out my inbox, and work on some ad-hoc tasks that came into our queue on Salesforce.

At 11:20, my stomach is a-grumbling so it’s time to stop working for my lunch break! Today, I’m eating this frozen meal that I picked up from Publix yesterday. It looked good so I hope it tastes good! While I nuke it in the microwave, I give the girls their first treats of the day (they each get 9 Temptations) and then work on an Instagram post. I eat lunch and scroll through the Love Is Blind forum on Reddit because I’m a sucker for drama. The frozen meal is actually quite tasty! (My dietician would have wanted me to have something else with this because these meals are pretty low in calories, but I figure I’ll be snacking in the afternoon to make up the deficit.) With the remainder of my lunch break, I play some games on my phone and work on this post.

Once my lunch break is over, I do a two-hour working block. I respond to more emails, work through my contractor to-do list, and write a page of content that was supposed to be done in October. I also start working on this new project I’m doing for our Salesforce content cases. Since there are around 500 of these cases… it’s going to take me a while. Bit by bit, right?

Once my working block is done, it’s time for a break. Yay! I give the girls their mid-afternoon meal and then take a short siesta. I’m tired today and a 30-minute power nap is just what I need. When I wake up, I start scrolling through my personal email and I’m delighted to see Amazon has dropped off a package.

Fun things! I didn’t realize the bottle of color sealer would be so big. I only need it when I’m washing my hair right after dyeing it (the last time I used it, I felt like it worked well to keep my color locked in for a good amount of time). Oh, well! I also bought a cleaning kit for my phone/laptop/Airpods. And the big daddy of them all: a digital keypad for my front door. My next-door neighbor just installed on of these in their home… so why not me?! I’m weighing the pros and cons of asking my apartment complex if I can install this or just doing it anyway and hoping I don’t get in trouble. Hmmmm.

Anyway, it’s soon back to work for my final working block of the day. But first, I need to get my snack pack! Since I am absolutely a child when it comes to food and I honestly have a hard time eating snacks in the afternoon because I find the process of preparing food to be tedious, I decided to buy a set of bento boxes. I filled four of them with nuts, Cheez-Its, dark-chocolate covered pomegranates, and fruit. Now when it’s time for my afternoon working block, I just grab the snack pack out of my fridge and can pick at it throughout the afternoon. Am I a genius? Maybe.

I’m working through my contractor tasks when my mom Facetimes me to ask if the refrigerator I listed on Facebook Marketplace for them has gotten any messages today. (They got a new fridge and are selling their old one.) Annnnd… that’s when I discover that I somehow changed the price of the fridge to $15,000. !!! That’s one expensive fridge! I quickly bring the price back down to a much more reasonable $150 and now it looks like I’m offering an incredible deal on a magical fridge. Hey, maybe this will help get it sold!

Once I get off the phone with my mom, I finish up my workday by sending off a bunch of meeting requests, following up on some Salesforce issues I had submitted tickets about, and answering emails. Oh, and I have a very cute digression for about 20 minutes when I decide I want to change all of my bookmarks to tab groups on Chrome. They look so colorful! I love them! Buuuut… I quickly realize I don’t really like these tab groups and how all these tabs open at one time. I’m not a million-tabs-open-at-a-time kinda gal, so while I’m sure tab groups work wonderfully for some people, it’s bookmarks or bust for me. But I decide to clean up my bookmarks a bit since things we’re looking a little crazy and now I’m very happy with the new, streamlined look.

It’s the little things, you guys.

Around 5:30pm, I close things down for the day. It was a good, productive day and I’m happy about that! Before I get dinner started, I work on this post for a bit and read/comment on a few blogs.

Tonight’s dinner plan was this homemade hamburger helper recipe I found on Skinnytaste’s website. I was excited to make it (and was planning on eating the leftovers for lunch the rest of the week), and was halfway through browning the meat when I looked at the recipe and realized I had forgotten to pick up one key ingredient (chicken broth). Ughhhh. I had to quickly pivot and use the browned meat for homemade nachos! All’s well that ends well.

I eat dinner in front of the TV, finishing up season one of Deal or No Deal Island. It was a good but also frustrating show at times. At some point during one of the episodes (I watched two), Eloise started meowing for attention so I decided it was the perfect time to get out a teaser and play with her! She loves this very cheap teaser the most and even Lila got in on the fun. (Lila’s not huge into teasers, but every now and then she’ll surprise me.) It was a good time all around and it reminded me why I need to play with them more. Afterward, I gave them a handful of Greenies.

Once my show was over, I Facetimed with my mom and we talked about the show (she watched it, too!) and then had a catch-up session for about 30 minutes. Then, I scrolled through the Reddit forum for Deal or No Deal Island to make sure everyone was as incensed about a few of the players as I was and then had to force myself up from the couch to start my nighttime routine.

There’s a lot to do before I go to bed; sometimes, I can get through my nighttime routine in 20 minutes or less but my apartment is a mess, I have clean dishes in the dishwasher that need to be put away so I can load in the dirty dishes in my kitchen sink, I have laundry to fold and put away, a multi-step skincare routine to do… whew. I do a little bit at a time and then sit down at my laptop to either read/comment on blogs, edit/add photos to this post, or respond to comments. I have the MNF game playing in the background (muted) and today’s episode of Pod Save America playing on my phone. The episode gives me hope and that feels terrifying. Will this turn out okay? Who knows. But maybe having hope right now isn’t the worst thing.

I finally finish up my nighttime routine around 11 (I was very, very slow tonight, ha) and that’s when the MNF starts to get interesting. Of course it goes into overtime so I have to watch it to the end. The game ends around 11:30 so it’s time for bed! CPAP mask on, lights off, and an ASMR video lulling me to sleep.

Yay or nay on Daylight Saving Time ending?

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

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?