Time Track Tuesday: A TUESDAY

 These godforsaken TUESDAYS this semester, you guys. I knew they were going to suck early on, and for a while, I worried that my Tuesday attitude was actually making them suck, but no. That's not it. TUESDAYS ARE REALLY HARD THIS SEMESTER.

I am hopeful that they will be less hard in the Spring. When I am teaching a new-to-me 250 person lecture with brand new content that I need to cover. Erm. Maybe not. But! I do not actually teach that class on Tuesdays, so maybe I can use Tuesdays to get ahead for the following Monday, fresh off what will surely be a flop-sweat-and-imposter-syndrome-inducing Monday lecture. Is it imposter syndrome if you actually don't know what the fuck you're doing, though? KIDDING. I do know. It'll be great! Every public speaker needs a good dose of ABJECT TERROR to get the old adrenaline flowing. IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES, REALLY.

ANYWAY.

TUESDAY 11/18:

My alarm goes off at 5:15 am. Usually, this is the cue for Ben and me to spring from our beds and run together before Ben leaves town for Peoria. This Tuesday, though, as soon as we politely asked Alexa to STFU, we heard pounding rain **whomp whomp** Plan B: Drink coffee in bed and work on the answer key for the final exam in my 60-section course that I supervise but do not teach. My iPhone tells me it will not be raining in the afternoon, so I plan to come home early and run then. Alexa tells me it will rain until 7pm. I HOPE SHE IS WRONG. Ben starts laundry and starts getting ready for his commute.

5:15-6:30: Work on answer key in bed

6:30: Jump up,  strip both of our beds, switch the laundry and start a new load, think I actually should have gotten up earlier and done a strength workout, and really quick go wipe down all 3 bathrooms while Ben takes Annabel for a walk before he leaves.

6:45-7:20: Get Minnie dressed and supervise breakfast and bag packing for all. Well, all but Jack, who was sleeping in and whom I forgot about or else I could have woken him up. Oops.

Luckily she slept in tiny braids (her call) so her hair is already crimped and ready to go.

7:20-8:05: I realize as I am walking Minnie to school that it is actually NOT RAINING, so I hurry home after I say goodbye to her and grab the dog and my headphones and some poop bags and holler at the big kids to be nice to each other and run!

8:05-8:15: Walk Dorothy and Cooper to the bus stop, which is a nice cool down. It starts to rain pretty hard the moment Annabel and I get home, and I feel Very Smug

8:15-8:30: Do a fast tidy of the house. The kids did a half-assed breakfast clean up, so I finish that up. I collect stray socks and towels from various paces and gather random water glasses, but, really, everyone's bedrooms look fine. Except mine. Even though I have extra sheets for both beds and an extra blanket for my bed, Ben's blanket is more of a blankie situation, so I have to wash and dry it before I can remake his bed. I also wash all the pillow shams in our room because I only have one set of those for each duvet cover. Weirdly, I wash the kids' duvet covers every week, but I rarely wash ours. I think because we never lie on our beds midday? And they are too tall for the dog to climb on? Or I just think everyone is gross but me. THIS IS PROBABLY IT. (Everyone in our house sleeps with a bottom sheet, a top sheet, a blanket, and a duvet cover with an insert inside it. I almost never wash the inserts, if I am being honest, but all the rest of the bedding gets laundered every week, and every kid bed has a complete set of all of these things as a back up. Ben and I also both have 2 different duvet covers and sham sets, but I just... don't change them very often-- I do the sheets and blankets every week, though)

8:30: Realize I have LITERALLY 15 minutes to pull myself together and leave for campus, since I am giving an exam at 9:30. So, naturally, the first thing I do is make another pot of coffee to fill up my travel mug.

8:45: Leave for campus with exactly the right amount of time to park and make it to my classroom (NOT in the same building as my office) to give my exam. Which is why I brought the exams home with me. Only I see when I get in my car that I did not bring the exams home with me. I spend the whole drive to campus (about 30 minutes to go like 6 miles) troubleshooting. First I cal every secretary in our department to see if someone can swing by my office and make sure the bag of exams is in there. If it's not, then I am going to just put the whole thing on Canvas in the 3 minutes I will have before the start of class. I definitely do not have time to park and go to both my office and my lecture hall, but I would do it and arrive a few minutes late to class if I knew for sure the exams were there. NO ONE ANSWERS THEIR PHONE. I am on campus and slowly slowly slowly inching to my garage thinking that maybe I should just sprint to the lecture hall and put the exam on Canvas without checking my office for the bag of tests when I notice that the media center parking space outside my building is empty! GAME FREAKING CHANGER YOU GUYS.

9:12-9:18: Haphazardly park my car in front of my building and race into the media center to beg for the parking pass. Get the pass and literally run up 3 flights of stairs to my office where I find this glorious sight:

9:18-9:30: Swipe the exams and run to my lecture hall, hoping I don't get lost since the rooms are numbered nonsensically and I went in a different door than I usually do and the building is a labyrinth.

Also! If you ignore the fact that my bun is off center and lumpy (and it moved a little more to the right all day), I managed to look TOTALLY FINE and maybe even cute in under 15 minutes! Buuuuut I should have worn a warmer coat.

9:30-10:55: Give an exam! Wait for everyone to finish! Walk back to my car because it needs to go in the garage-- can't use the media pass all day.

10:55-11:05: IT TOOK ME TEN MINUTES TO PULL OUT OF THAT SPOT and turn around so I was actually going the right way. My god.

11:30-2:30: Just a BLUR of work, mostly in my office after I move my car to my garage, but also at home, mostly on stuff for next semester and the answer key I started my day with.

2:30-Pick up my favorite kindergartener and KEEP WORKING.

Minnie procrastinated on coloring the turkeys on her November reading log, so she had the daunting task of coloring 18 of them. She got... a few done.

I finish my answer key, which took 2 days and is 28 pages long. It is hard to get 30 people to have the same grading standards on essay questions, you know?

I FINALLY do the strength workout I should have done in the morning.

3:45-4:15 Light tidying, fold laundry, get Minnie ready for dance, pack snacks for Dorothy and Cooper.

Cooper requires two different protein drinks (talked about the lead study with his doctor and was very reassured, FYI), plus all of this crap, plus a burger (not pictured). (Ben grills a bunch of burgers on Mondays for Coop to eat during the week).

4:15-5:30: Drive all the hell over Madison, WI, in the dark and rain. 75 minutes for like maaaaaybe 16 miles of driving FML.

First I drop Dorothy and Minnie at dance (Minnie has jer jazz shoes crammed under her Crocs)

Next, I drive through horrible traffic to campus where I drop Cooper off at diving (he is in charge of the team snack bin)

Then I claw my way back to the dance studio where, if I am lucky, I arrive in time for acro and get 45 minutes to sit on a bench and read a book or do any work I couldn't do earlier in the day. Last week, I made a spring syllabus. This week, I read The Names.

5:30-6:15: Read, blissfully, at dance

6:20-6:35: Fight our way home in the very last workday traffic

6:35-7:40: Make (ridiculous leftover/sandwich) dinner, clean it up, pack NINE lunches (Wednesday and Thursday lunches for 4 kids, plus a dance dinner for Wednesday night Dorothy), tidy the kitchen.

7:40-8:15: Minnie bed and bath, plus reading. She reads to me, and I read to her

8:15-8:35: Remake our beds, put away laundry. I have to sneak into Minnie's room with hers because she fell asleep FAST.

8:35-9:30: Everyone showers and winds down.

9:30-11: Dorothy and Cooper go to bed, and Jack and I stay up way too late watching All Her Fault

11-4am: Sleep

4am: MINNIE COMES INTO MY ROOM because she had a bad dream and spends the next 2 hours kicking me and stealing all my blankets. She wakes up at 6 because she is too hot, and I am starting my second day in a row without a pre-dawn run *sob**. It's fun to wake up next to a life-size Cabbage Patch Kid, though, and I eneded up running mid morning on Wednesday, after a meeting and before another one.