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.

Time Track Tuesday-- some more details

 1. Multiple people commented about shopping on a Sunday, that is sounded not fun, they'd never go to multiple stores at once, and I just... cannot relate. I LOVE shopping. Even Costco when it's slammed. BUT ALSO. I do NOT have time to do it at all right now so I am making tons of carts with holiday wish list items in them in advance of cyber Monday sales. I would adore spending my time going from store to store in search of the best gifts and deals, though. IT'S SO FUN. Does anyone else love shopping?

Look how happy we are to head into a totally packed Saturday afternoon Costco

2. I got a couple comments last week about my lack of showering after working out, and you guys. IT IS SO GD COLD HERE IN THE MORNING that I WISH I would sweat. SWEATING WOULD FEEL SO GOOD. I bet I will end up needing to take a super fast morning shower when it warms up. I almost did on Saturday because it was in the low 60s, but I just sort of walked around looking gross for the rest of the day instead.

But! Speaking of showering! I require everyone in my entire family to be nighttime shower people because I am the one who changes the sheets, and I think if people went to bed w/o showering, I would want to change them MORE than once a week because I am clearly a weirdo.

Speaking of sheets! I am finally on a sheet changing schedule for this semester. AND THE SEMESTER IS OVER IN 3 WEEKS. Geez. I hope it does not take me as long to settle into spring.

3. The general theme of the comments I get when I talk about a daily breakdown is OH MY GOD THAT'S TOO MUCH STUFF and WHOA YOU HAVE NO MARGIN. I mean. You guys. YES. Also, it does not seem like I am doing very much in the moment, I swear.

Next week, I will share a Tuesday with you-- this has typically been the very worst day of my week this semester-- although we have done a few things to make it smoother. But then! Jack started his dive season, and it got WAY WORSE.

Time Track Tuesday: A Monday

 5:30 am: Time to leap from my bed and go for a run! It takes me a good 10 minutes to brush my teeth, put on my sweats, get dog poop bags, drink some water, etc.

6:20 am: 20 minute upper body strength work out on Apple Fitness Plus 

6:40 am: Pack lunches at water bottles in back packs for Dorothy, Cooper, and Minnie Put Jack's lunch and a Bubblr on the dryer where he can grab it. Wake Jack up so he can go for a run. Lucky Annabel gets to start her day with an hour of running,

6:45: Minnie is awake! She brushes her teeth, puts on the clothes she laid out on Sunday for the entire week. I do her hair in her requested style, and she eats breakfast (right now, she wants grapes, a piece of cheese, a peanut butter sandwich and a Danimal, plus her Kirkland kids vitamins). I wipe down all the bathrooms and make my bed and Minnie's, start some laundry, and help various people with various parts of their breakfast, plu drink SO MUCH COFFEE. 

7:25: Time to talk Minnie to schoooooool!

7:35: Make Jack a breakfast to go and  sequester myself in my bathroom with MOAR coffee to do my hair and makeup

7:55: Check in with Dorothy and Cooper as the do their final preparations. I have to be suuuuuper nonchalant about it, but sometimes Dorothy accepts help with her hair. Putting on her socks is sometimes a trigger for her, but if I time myself right, I can find a matching pair for her (she and Cooper wear the exact same frigging socks, and sometimes, the laundry fairy messes up putting them away equitably) and have them appear at the right moment. Dorothy can get distracted looking for them and then start primping again still sockless and it's a whole Thing.

8:05: Walk Dorothy and Cooper to the bus. Annabel enjoys this, and it's fun to walk by Minnie's classroom. She bangs on the window and brings friends to wave to us.

8:20: Crunch time for me-- I throw on my clothes and pack my work bag and really really really need to be IN THE CAR DRIVING AWAY by 8:35 AT THE LATEST.

9:00: Aaaaaaaah, I am in my quiet office where I check what I need to do in class Monday and Tuesday, answer emails, and delight in my solitude.

9:55: Teach my great speakers and speeches class. Elizabeth Warren's 2019 Washing Square Rally speech is on tap as an example of public memory-- both the social imaginary she tried to change with her selfie lines and pinkie promises (ladies can be president!) and .the way she retold feminist labor history in the speech itself. Class was great!

11:00: Meet with my awesome TA

11:30: WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK. On tap Monday was a good mix of grading and responding to students and also prep for spring. I ate my packed lunch at my desk-- an arugula salad with chicken breast, beets, and goat cheese, plus an apple and string cheese.

1:00: Office hours. I only had one visitor, so I kept my work streak alive and worked through 40 research paper proposals for my Tuesday class, all the weekly assignments in my Monday class, and recording grades for Monday classes's recent blue book exam.

3:00: Walk on campus and listen to podcasts. I try to take a walk before office hours, too, but it was not in the cards this day.

3:45: Meeting prep

4:00: Weekly TA staff meeting for the big course I direct

6:00: Finish up a few more things before heading to the pool to collect Minnie from Ben

7:15: Arrive home with Minnie. We walk the dog. Minnie watches TV while I eat dinner (I WAS SO HUNGRY) (I had leftover salmon and caesar salad in a bag from Costco plus an apple with peanut butter and a couple energy bites). I also had to do some housework which actually made me really mad, since Ben worked from home all day.

8:00 Minnie bedtime, a little later than usual, but I stayed after my meeting a little later than usual.

8:30: Ben, Coop, Jack all home. Jack has dinner. Coop gets ready for bed. Ben makes sure he is ready to go to Peoria in the morning. A final dog walk.

9:00: Dorothy is home from dance and ready to crash. She has a giant snack and she and I both take showers.

10:00 Couch rotting. We are watching Sticks. We actually have like 4 shows going and sort of drop in on them randomly, which doesn't work super well for me, but also I AM TIRED, so I mostly just fall asleep snoring with my mouth open most nights and call it watching TV.

Time Track Tuesday: A Sunday

 We had a lovely Sunday that's pretty representative of our weekends generally (although this  coming weekend we have a bunch of stuff going on including an out of town dive meet both days).

7am: Minnie came stomping into our room and woke us up. I asked her to turn on my coffee, which she did, and then she asked if we could watch Bob's Burgers-- omg I love that show!

8:30am: Ben and I went for a run

(said goodby to Harry, cleaned up breakfast, colored a Thanksgiving tablecloth with Minnie for a few minutes; ate some oatmeal)

10am-1pm-ish: We did a house refresh and ate lunch

(dog walk; got dressed)

2pm: I went to Marshalls, World Market, Michaels, and Homegoods in search of Thanksgiving table things, and you guys! It was MOSTLY CHRISTMAS! What happened to Thanksgiving?! I also stopped by Target to grab a sweatshirt and a couple of long sleeved dresses for Minnie.

4pm: I raided the kids' Halloween candy to make cookie dough while Ben made dinner

5:30-6:30pm: Dinner and Out of the Loop

6:30-7:30pm: Dinner clean up and actual cookie baking

(dog walk, sitting around, etc)

8-9pm: More Out of the Loop

(shower)

9:45-10:30: Couch rotting with Ben, watched The Chair Company

TUESDAY REPORT

 As many of you tactfully predicted in the comments of THIS POST, my first Tuesday of the school year DID NOT GO AS PLANNED.

For one thing, you guys, I GOT MY PERIOD for the first time in NINE MONTHS. This means that my menopause clock (menopause is official when you have gone a whole year without a period) STARTS OVER. I also got a terrible little raging insomnia bout and had just awful PMS (maybe the p stands for PERPETUAL), so I was already a little off my game. (I got a different brand of estrogen patch when I refilled instead of the one I had been enjoying, and the adhesive didn't really work and I didn't notice right away, and I think that's what kicked off the shitstorm. I am still waiting for more follow up from my menopause care provider to see if I need to adjust meds or maybe have some imaging.) (I am also calling pharmacies trying to find my OG brand in stock-- apparently, this happens with estrogen patches; they don't all work the same for everyone). (Spent a whole day tracking a box down. Had to pay $100 since it was an early refill and my insurance wouldn't cover it. They will cover it again next week, so I will order then and stay a few patches ahead in case sourcing is an issue again. My provider also made a note that I can only have a certain brand, which sometimes encourages a pharmacy to stock that brand).

For another thing-- and this is the thing you noticed-- I am expecting to do A WHOLE LOT before I leave the house on Tuesdays. Luckily! I am tracking my time right now, so I can tell you exactly how the morning went.

I meant to get up at 5, but I BARELY SLEPT AT ALL (did not fall asleep until sometime after TWO AM), and my iPhone alarm was on silent (WHY IS THIS A FEATURE? WHO MEANS TO SET A SILENT ALARM?), sooooooo I got up at 6.

6:00: Put on a sweatshirt and exfoliating foot lotion and dorky crew socks (anytime I wear socks, I treat it like a mini foot spa situation), dorky ankle weights, and a dorky vest and walk Annabel while listening to The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus; start laundry on the way out

6:30: Wash my face and apply one million potions. Put on my under eye patches. Help Minnie get dressed in the outfit she picked out for her self-proclaimed PINK WEEK, help her brush her teeth, persuade her to wear at least some of her hair out of her face, make her requested breakfast of a peanut butter sandwich, a piece of cheese, grapes, and a Danimal (shrug). Celebrate Cooper when he came upstairs (FOURTEEN LAST TUESDAY!); switch laundry.

7:00: Supervise sibling gift opening and encourage Coop to text the grands to thank them for his gifts and cards; general kid management, although I also had time to drink coffee since Minnie needs the most hands-on help, and she is pretty much ready to go before she eats breakfast and can go straight from the table to school; pack lunches and ice packs and water bottle into bags (the actual lunches themselves get packed the night before). Decide my hair looks so cute with my face-washing headband on that I actually WEAR a headband for the day (different one); do a literal 5-minute face with a timer, and throw on my second first day of school outfit (one of my classes met for the first time!!)

7:30: Walk Minnie to school; come home to wipe down bathrooms real fast before leaving by 7:45 with Dorothy and Coper to go out to breakfast. (my work bag was packed, so all I had to do was throw my phone in there and go).Tidy breakfast (not messy since it was only Minnie and Jack), and switch laundry again as we leave).

8:00  Birthday breakfast at Hubbard and a quick trip to Kwik Trip to load up on energy drinks and garbage treats. 

9:00 Drop Dorothy and Cooper at school; rush to campus (only 2 miles but SO MUCH TRAFFIC). Park, walk to my classroom.

Missing from my morning? Cardio and strength training, bed making and general tidying. I had to fit this all in (45 minutes of exercise; 20 minutes of general housework) in the afternoon, subtracting it from focused work time. WHICH IS WHY I EXPECT SO MUCH OF TUESDAY MORNINGS.

Time Tracking Tuesday: A Sunday

 Minnie woke us up at 7:13 am, and she climbed in bed with me to watch Aladdin. I mostly fell back to sleep, only to be woken up for real at 7:45 when Jack came in to let us know he was on his way to golf 18 holes on the last day of Madison parks' golf season.

At 8-ish, Minnie and I got out of bed, and she scampered down the driveway to grab the newspaper while I laughed at our snowman and his constant hum.

I'm still all about the bagel and lox breakfast, and I also looked at blogs and the paper while I ate.

At 8:45, I set a 15-minute timer when I was struck by how terribly cluttered the laundry room was.

By 9 am, I had a giant bag of LITERAL GARBAGE from that room as well at the 2 drawers of the kitchen table and the three drawers of the table under the mirror in our main room.

From 9 to 1, I just cleaned the house, pretty slowly and not necessarily well. Here I am looking just freaking fabulous in Minnie's room, where I started my work.

I also did Dorothy's room and the girls' bathroom, as well as the front hallway floor, and I did some general plant maintenance.

By around 11, I was onto my bedroom and bathroom and still looking amazing.

Coop went to dive practice (not our Sunday to drive-- phew!) Jack came home from golf and did some homework before heading to actual work, and Ben cleaned the boys' bedrooms and the downstairs family room. The girls just sort of loafed around and did some sort of self-directed craft project with toilet paper rolls and beads and SO MUCH GLUE.

By noon, I was done with 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, and I dusted the living room part of our main room. I ate a lunch so half-assed it didn't even deserve its own plate while Ben fed the kids and himself, and then I got started on the kitchen.

Also, I still looked FABULOUS.

Ben ran a few errands (INCLUDING GETTING A PRICE ADJUSTMENT AT KOHLS BECAUSE HE IS SECRETLY A 67-YEAR-OLD WOMAN) and came home with our grocery order.

Before I put the groceries away, I went from this

to a much more presentable THIS:

From about 1-4 we put away groceries, folded and put away laundry, made a couple of beds-- I am not totally sure where the time between 1 and 4 went, to tell you the truth. Lots of letting the dog in and out, helping Minnie with various things, hearing about Cooper's inward double (he is working up to replacing all of his 1.5's and 2's with 2.5's), etc.

At 4, we finally persuaded Dorothy and Minnie to get dressed for the day (LOL), and we rounded up hats, gloves, and coats for Coop, Dorothy, Minnie and ourselves so we could all actually leave the house (I KNOW RIGHT)

We had a quick dinner at the golf course restaurant (we all miss summer)

And then we made it to a north pole party and christmas tree lighting event at our favorite outdoor mall. SO FUN!!

Despite that awesomeness, Dorothy's highlight of the day was her 6:30 pm trio practice at her dance studio. She is so excited to have a trio this year, loves the girls in her group, cannot wait to perform this number on stage-- all of the things. The studio calls solos/duets/trios "specials," and I can assure you, Dorothy feels VERY SPECIAL. Also, the girls were all wearing Lulu dance studio pants hashtag spoiled AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN PLAN IT.

Dorothy and I got home a little before 8, right in the thick of the bedtime scramble. Minnie and I are reading the Junie B. Jones series, and I love telling her the name of the next chapter and listening to her guesses about what will happen based on the chapter title-- so cute! Jack needed help with trigonometry, and I tried really really hard to help him (LOL).

Ben and I closed out our night with our current fave show Shrinking and were in bed by 10, which is a pretty recurrent theme of all of my days. (Also we ate SO MANY OLIVES my god).