My weekdays tend to be pretty "run of the mill" so I chose Monday, October 10th for my "day in the life". I got up and threw on my robe after weighing myself. Found out that the pesky chip basket at the Mexican joint on Saturday night did me in again. Up a little (very standard Monday - ugh). Then I started making lunches for the kiddos.
Then I got the kiddos up. I had to help my daughter who is fighting wicked allergies with this dry fall (and the wind we've been having) clean out her eyes and do some drops. Not fun! I settled her in with an ice pack (leftover from my lactation days) to reduce the swelling.
Otherwise, the morning routine went pretty normal - everyone into school clothes (pretty easy for kids to get dressed when navy/khaki/white are the only choices), socks, shoes, breakfast (waffles for the girl, Cheerios for the boy), ensure girl has brushed hair and assist with ponytail (boy gets No.2 clipper guard every 4 weeks so we don't have to do this with him!).
But today we were all moving a little slow (plus with the eye drama) so we headed out the door a smidgen late (after I threw on clothes 2 minutes after we are normally out the door - yikes). Dropped the kids off at school and ran home to finish getting myself ready. Then off to Columbia (40 minutes door to door) with this beautiful color along the way (better in person, but you get the idea - hard to take a pic while driving!). Stopped for gas and breakfast (too ashamed to take photo - thought of CTER's discussion about food logs showing the what/where/when/why).
Got to my friend's office - Gene the surveyor and I go way back. I told him I'd come by today to sort out a floodplain elevation issue on a project he's working on. Took me way longer than I'd planned (I hate the FEMA Map Service Center web site!!) Then I made a slide for my Society of Women Engineers section with pictures for the slide show at the conference later this week. Headed across town to the ARC. Got my swim on in these lap lanes. Unfortunately, at 1:30 every weekday (not sure on weekends), they close this pool for 1.5 hours for "maintenance". So I got kicked out and this is what it looked like as I left:
Stopped in and bought my son a mini photo album to put his summer conservation camp pics in ($1 store). Also stopped for a soda and burger (2 PM is too late for lunch - and I almost left this out since I'm ashamed again). Then headed back down the happy highway for home enjoying some more awesome color (and more difficulty getting pics while driving):
Got back to town with 30 min to spare so went on home and cleaned out my car and checked a couple blogs. Then back to school to pick up kids and sit in the long carpool line (once I could even get in the parking lot). Picked up my kids and two of the neighbor's kids and headed for home dropping the spare two on the way.
Then the usual afternoon homework, start the laundry, etc. I worked on packing up parts of the rest of the week's lunches since I'll be out of town and mother-in-law will have to take over the normal morning routine. Then I typed up the routine for each morning and added all the info on where I'd be each day and what other commitments were on the family calendar. Evening rolled on as I sent the boy off to football practice and fed the girl and me (corn dogs - yes it was an awful diet day)/let the girl play while I did some research for a client and wrote my swim blog post. Read some more blogs. Later realized it was dark and she hadn't done her nightly reading yet so I had her do that. Ran both kids through the shower and folded laundry. Sent/read a few more emails/blogs.
Flipped through channels for maybe 30 min and gave up and went to bed. Couldn't sleep so I got up and started this post before I forgot everything anyway. I work for myself so my work days vary based on the load (pretty light right now) and other obligations as a mom/wife. While this was a pretty typical day, Monday was the only day this week that was going to be this "normal" because Tuesday is "early release" day (once/month kids get out at 2:00 instead of 3:05 for staff meeting) although I'll work at home all day so not a big deal.
Then Wed-Sat I'm leaving for two overlapping conferences (International Erosion Control Association Great Rivers Chapter in St. Louis and then Society of Women Engineers national conference in Chicago). I don't travel much normally - usually up and back same day for even my more remote clients - so it figures these two events were back to back. But thus the need to kind of lay out everything I do for a very forgetful mother-in-law. Will miss my kiddos, but I'm kind of looking forward to my water quality geek friends on Wed and my generally awesome women engineer friends the rest of the week. I'm sure I'll be beat when I get home late on Sat!
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