Daily life

I know, I should post something about the Reflection Blogger (or is it Blogger Reflection Award?) that De gave me. I also should answer the comments to my last three posts or so and also I wanted to do a follow-up post on the mommy guilt post. And I haven’t written e-mail. I’m suffering from a bit of blogger’s block. I open my feed reader, I read blogs, I want to write a comment, I mark the post as unread. Repeat. So I decided to start somewhere, anywhere and since flutter wrote about her day (oh, and she sent me beautiful interview questions too, another blog post to write, soon, I promise), and I really love imagining how you all spend your days, I’ll do the same. This is more about my plan of how the days should go though since in real life I end up shuffling things around and not doing what I planned to do all the time. So:

6.30: My alarm starts beeping. I try to silence it as fast as I can so that my husband doesn’t wake up if possible. I then try to leave the bed immediately which might take up to 15 minutes. I take my glasses and my slippers and go to the annex. Pee, on the scales, dress in yesterday’s clothes. Then comes the tricky part: doing things in my room without turning on the computer. – I’m still working on that. If I succeed I then meditate for 10 minutes and write morning pages afterwards. When I don’t succeed I read e-mails and blogs and then I either meditate or write morning pages.

about 7.30: I go back to the old part of the house. (This sounds as if I lived in a huge villa but we have six rooms only which include the rooms we teach in.) Usually my husband has started making breakfast at this time and I go and wake up my son. I join in breakfast making, pack snacks and water for kindergarten, we sit down and eat. At this point we’re usually already a little late. I brush both my son’s and my teeth, and put in my contacts while yelling at him to put on his shoes and jacket.

8.15: I walk my son to kindergarten.

8.30: At kindergarten my son removes his jacket, and shoes, puts on his indoor shoes, and hangs up his backpack while I talk constantly, “Please, take off your shoes. No, your shoes. Okay. Now the other one. Leo! Your shoes! Now put them on the shelf. You have to put your shoes on the shelf. Come on, we’re late. Fine. Where are your indoor shoes? Never mind. Your indoor shoes? Where are they? So, please put them on. Put your shoes on. Now the other one.” Well, you get the drift. Say goodbye, leave kindergarten, put on headphones and listen to podcasts, and walk back home. On my way home I often go to the health food store or something similar.

9.00 or 9.30: Come back home, talk to husband, make kitchen if he hasn’t done it already (rarely), make a pot of tea, pretend that I’m housewife-y, make beds.

about 10.30: Read e-mail, read blogs, completely lose track of time

11.30: Realize that I’m totally hungry but haven’t done anything yet. Confer with husband about what to make for lunch.

12.00: Every other day this is the point of the day where I work out. Every other day I plan a real workout like doing beginner/rehab T-Tapp which takes 50 minutes and every single time I decide to do the 15-minute workout instead because I ran out of time. Meanwhile my dear husband cooks because I spent my whole morning in front of the computer. Or I decide that it’s to late and promise myself to go for a walk later.

13.00: Eat. Until then we are both ravenous because we have been hungry for 1 1/2 hours.

13.30: When I have exercised I take a shower. I dress in fresh clothes and put on make-up. I make it barely in time for:

14.00: Start teaching.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I teach until 19.00. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I teach until 15.45. Then I run off to be in time to fetch my son from kindergarten (headphones and podcasts or sometimes music again).

On Tuesdays we often go to the library. Sometimes we run errands that I can’t do in the mornings because the shops are not yet open. Then we go home and have some quiet time. On Thursdays we go grocery shopping together. On the days I eat dinner with my son we eat at about 18.30. We almost always have sandwiches for dinner since we all have warm meals for lunch. On the days I teach until 19.00 my son eats with my mother-in-law. So at 19.00 I go upstairs to fetch him there.

19.30: Start putting my son to bed. Pajamas, brushing teeth, reading a book, lights out. (This sounds easy and fast, doesn’t it? Well, just imagine something like my monologue at kindergarten in the morning with an extra helping of exhaustion on both sides and some lengthy arguments about why this is not the appropriate time to play with legos.)

20.15: On my long teaching days this is the point of the day when I eat dinner. Sometimes my husband joins me but often he works even longer than that. On the other days I sit in the kitchen for a while because my son doesn’t like to be alone in the apartment when he goes to sleep.

20.45: I leave the kitchen and go to the annex. I talk with my husband, I play a little guitar, I write in my gratitude journal, I watch an episode of “Angel” while knitting. I talk with my husband some more. Sometimes he gives me a guitar lesson, sometimes we watch something together, sometimes we just talk.

22.00: My PDA sounds an alarm to remind me that this is the time I should start going to bed. I shut the alarm off and decide that whatever I am doing now is more important than sleep.

22.30 or 22.45: I finally stop what I am doing and get ready for bed. Often after my husband has started getting ready.

23.00: Lights out.

(Note to those of you who remember my back to basics post: I’m still not getting enough sleep but since I wrote that post at least I have managed to move my bedtime half an hour forward.)

So, this is the plan. You might ask, “When does she blog?” Well, that’s part of the problem. Mostly on weekends, sometimes (as I do now) while my son is asking me when I’ll make dinner, sometimes in between students and sometimes between lunch and lessons. Writing this down I realize how many new habits I have incorporated into my day. Talking with my husband several times a day is one of those, not spending time at the computer in the evenings is one, going to bed earlier, spending time with my son, meditating and doing morning pages first things in the morning is also quite new. Also playing guitar almost daily. Seems that I’m doing better than I thought. But I also realized why my blog-writing and -reading has suffered: last year I had a lot of mini-breaks between lessons. I used those breaks to read, comment, and write. Now my time-table is packed. Some days I don’t even have time to eat in the afternoon (and me without a mid-afternoon snack is not a pretty sight). So I have to put some blogging into the mornings without exercise.

How do you do it? Do you have a regular schedule or is every day different? I’m curious.