5:15 a.m.: My alarm goes off. Snooze, cats, think about why I would ever willingly schedule a 6am HIIT class.
5:25 a.m.: I’m up. And what a nice morning surprise: I started my period! Ughhh. I deal with that, brush my teeth, pull my hair into a bun, get dressed, and fill up my water bottle.
5:40 a.m.: I leave for the gym. When I arrive, I don’t see my mom’s car (she’s usually here before me), so I check on her location. She’s still at home! She calls me and says she never heard her alarm. Tsk, tsk! I’m already here, so I’ll just get through HIIT class on my own.
6:00 a.m.: HIIT class. This one doesn’t feel as good as Monday. Some of the exercises were tougher on my hips/IT band. I just had to take things a little lighter than normal!
6:45 a.m.: All done with my workout for today, yay! I order a bagel and iced coffee from the Einstein’s app on my way out of the gym and then swing by to pick it up.
7:10 a.m.: I’m home. I feed the cats and eat breakfast while catching up on some of my email subscriptions (I have 70-ish in my folder to read, eeks!)
7:40 a.m.: Work time! I mostly work through my morning tasks and then work on finalizing the December content assignments.
8:45 a.m.: I apply my psoriasis hair treatment, which needs to sit for 15 minutes before I rinse it out. So I read and comment on blogs while I wait. Then, I take a shower and get dressed. I also light a pumpkin apple candle in my office. So cozy!
9:40 a.m.: Work time! I’m locked in on finishing up the December content assignments, but then get distracted by a side chat with our BizOps team because they want to make a change that’s going to fuck up our content workflow big time. Thankfully, once I calmly explain that it wouldn’t be ideal for that to happen, they find a much better solution. Whew, crisis averted!
11:00 a.m.: I take a break to throw a load of linens (bath towels, kitchen towels, hand towels, washcloths, and reusable cotton rounds that I use for my skincare routine), brush out my hair, and take my meds. I also do my weekly CPAP cleaning—I soak the humidifier, mask, headgear, and tubing in a warm bubble bath for about an hour.
11:30 a.m.: Back to work and back to finalizing December assignments.
12:10 p.m.: My tummy is grumblin’ so it’s time for lunch. As I heat up hamburger stew, I take the CPAP equipment out of its bubble bath to let it air dry. Then I eat lunch while watching, you guessed it, an episode of Friends. After eating, I clean up the girls’ dishes and respond to some Teams messages that came in.
1:00 p.m.: I take a nap. I slept less than 5 hours last night so I am dragging.
2:30 p.m.: A loud noise wakes me up. Was the loud noise in my dream or is someone trying to break into my apartment? I check the Ring camera – nobody is there. So it must have been my dream! Now that I’m up, I switch over the laundry and then see that a package was delivered. I get it from the doorstep and it’s Lucy’s blanket! (Her Christmas present from me this year – here’s the Etsy shop where I bought it.) It’s so cozy and cute. I call my mom to show her, but she doesn’t answer.
2:50 p.m.: I’m reading through some email subscriptions, intending to get back to work at 3, but then my mom calls me and we have a long chat! She loves the blanket.
3:30 p.m.: Okay, time for work! I call into a meeting and then work on December assignments. Allllll dooooone. Woohoo! I clear out my email inbox and do some easy content posting to wrap up the week.
5:30 p.m.: I’m done with work – time to start my weekend! I go through my ritual of closing all the blinds, turning on lights, and lighting a cozy candle. Then I flop on the couch and dissociate for a while, playing Happy Color on my phone while listening to a podcast. I also order pizza from my fave local place.
6:20 p.m.: Okay, I need to get up and do something so I decide to put together my Christmas tree! I have the perfect spot for it in my living room. I’m always nervous I’m going to plug in the tree and the lights won’t work, but they do! I’m unsure if I will keep this tree past this Christmas (I’ve had it for five years) since more and more lights are burned out every year, but it’s not enough to be too noticeable. I start the arduous fluffing process.
6:35 p.m.: Food has been delivered, so I take a break to eat dinner while watching some episodes of Friends and coloring.
8:00 p.m.: Blogging time, mainly reading blogs and catching up on commenting! Yay! Mom calls me at some point and we chat for a bit.
9:10 p.m.: Puttering time. I keep fluffing the tree, setting up my smart plug for the tree lights, stringing some lights over the bookshelves in my office, and putting away the oodles of Christmas bins that have been littering my office for weeks. I also do some tidying of the apartment and fold laundry.
9:45 p.m.: More blogging time! More commenting, working on my post that will publish tomorrow, etc.
10:15 p.m.: Puttering time. I put away all the clean laundry, start the dishwasher, and hang another string of lights in my bedroom. Christmas has arrived!
10:40 p.m.: I give myself some dedicated reading time on the couch. I’m enjoying my romance a bit more. I should use this time to do some heat therapy, but I’m tired of doing it every night, sigh.
11:10 p.m.: Set up my CPAP machine since all the equipment has been air-drying in different spots in my apartment.
11:20 p.m.: It’s lights out for me!
END NOTES //
- Sleep score: 67
- Apnea score: 4.5 per hour
- Sleep duration: 4 hrs, 52 min (ughhhhhh)
- Podcast episodes: 4 (Have You Seen This Man?, Good Hang, Rob Has a Podcast, On Fire with Jeff Probst)
- TV episodes: 4 (Friends)
- Facetimes with mom: 2
- Reading time: 1 hour (Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave – audiobook), 28 minutes (Battle of the Bookstores)
friday in the life: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014
Gah! That is a bad night of sleep. Less than 5 hours is miserable. Really less than 7 is bad for me. I’m glad your romance is picking up for you! But I can’t believe you had a meeting at 3:30 on a Friday! That would not go over well at my company unless it was for a client call or something! We try not to have Friday afternoon meetings if possible I had one at 2:30EST last week and was even feeling a bit bad about that!!
Our company just got sold to another digital marketing agency and they are in California, so for them, a 3:30 EST meeting is 12:30 – much more reasonable for a Friday. Sigh! At least these meetings are just a Q&A forum to ask questions about the transition process, so they are interesting/helpful!
I love how you structure your days!
Washing the CPAP parts is so tedious. It reminds me of washing all the pieces of my breast pump back in the day. Not my favorite memory!
What is your cats’ reaction to your tree? I am so nervous that Leo is going to destroy the tree and/or hurt himself!
They mainly leave the tree alone! They love sitting underneath it and every now and then, I’ll hear Lila chomping away at the plastic branches. Definitely keep any breakable ornaments higher on the tree because they love batting the ones on the lower branches. (I try to give them fun objects to bat off the tree!)
Oh! Every now and then, one of them (usually Eloise) will try to climb the center of the tree. She hasn’t done that in a while, but I also don’t have a kitten so I’m unsure how a kitten will react!
I got my period this week too! Twins! Also, WHY am I still getting my period???
Your tree looks good! We also have that feeling every year, that this year might be the last. Who knows! We are putting it up today so I hope that when it’s plugged in the lights go on!
OOOOOH! I LOVE the part of this where your work is over and you start the weekend! A cozy candle-pizza-putting up the Christmas tree, YAYYYYYY! I want a cozy night like this. Well- our tree will go up on Wednesday. I can’t wait.
Really nice job on getting up so early for the gym. I know it must have been hard! Glad you got a nap in.
Ugh, I’d not thought of the chore of cleaning the CPAP machine. Talk about adding insult to injury. That sounds like a pain. Friends is always good. I remember being glued to the TV on Thursdays when all the good NBC shows were on. I love Good Hang podcase. I’m not listening to them in order- I started at the beginning a while ago. I’m curious which episode you heard.
I’m still working through the back catalog of Good Hang! So this week, I listened to the episodes with Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg. 🙂
One of the reasons we got an unlit tree was because I never want to buy another tree in my entire life. The one we bought was almost $400! It makes my husband motion sick to put on the lights, though, so it’s my job. I shouldn’t complain to you, I guess, since they’re all your jobs!!!
This is how we differ. I never, ever want to string lights on a tree ever again, so I will happily buy another pre-lit Christmas tree again (and again, and again) if it means I do not have to string lights. That process just makes me angry for some reason, lol.
Cleaning the CPAP is a chore! I got a second hose so I can alternate them because it takes forever to dry when it’s been soaked. I hang it in the spare bathroom shower so it can drip-dry all week. Your tree looks festive, and it sounds like a perfect weekend to put it up!
A second hose! This is so smart. As long as I do the cleaning early enough in the day, it’ll be dry for the evening. The trick is to plug everything in and run the air for about 20 seconds to get any lingering water droplets out of the hose, and then let it air-dry for another hour or so. I have a hanger for my mask next to my bed, so I hang it upside down to get all the water droplets out!
Sounds like another good day- do you spend more time in November on blogging/reading/commenting or is it a year round thing for you? The past two Novembers have been way busier for me on the blogging front. I’m going to try NOT to do what I did last year, which was basically disappear for two months after the November intensity!
I am MUCH busier in November with blogging/reading/commenting! I try to keep up with all the posts, but it can be really hard! I think I just accept that November will be crazy but then things calm down in December. I hope you don’t disappear!
Geesh, glad your Bizops team listened to you and didn’t just make that change willy nilly!
Your tree is super-cute! I think I am getting excited about putting ours up this weekend!
If I hit 5 hours of sleep these days it’s a good night. And that doesn’t mean it’s in one piece. Sigh.
How fun to have your apartment already set up for Christmas a bit. I still need to do that.