An Average Day in my Life

"You don't have kids. You don't have a job. You must have all the time in the world!"

This is harder to write than it might seem, because average days are a bit hard to come by for me. I try to have a routine, and I do have a rough outline of a routine, but my body frequently throws me a curveball and I have to be more flexible. But in general, my average day goes as follows:

My daily alarm is set at 7:30, and I do my best to be out of bed shortly thereafter. I get dressed and either myself or Jonathon takes the dogs outside to do their business. (Our fence is still in progress. So we have to go outside with them to see to it they don’t chase the neighbor’s cows and that sort of thing.)

By 8:15 or so, I get Cinderella, our robot vacuum, started on her rounds and set about making breakfast. This vacuum is worth its weight in gold. The dogs drop a lot of hair and I’d have to vacuum at least three times a day to keep up without good old Cinderella! And there’s always the fun of singing, “…and we’ll make a pretty dress for Cinderelly!” when she is busy about her work.

Anyway, back to breakfast… Jonathon and I are both intermittent fasting now. At first it was just me, but he joined me a couple months ago. We usually eat at 9:00 or after and finish our eating for the day by 2:00 or so.

In the rotation for breakfast menus is fried eggs, bacon, and toast with coffee, or quiche, or gf pancakes with bacon or sausage, or omelettes with gf biscuits, etc… All of this must be made from scratch due to all my food sensitivities, and although I’m pretty fast in the kitchen, it can take some time. By the time we’re done eating, I’m usually sitting at the breakfast table with my coffee, writing up my to do list unless I did it the evening before.

Before I am quite ready to get up and get going on the day, the dogs have begun to stare at me in persistent fashion because they also want to eat. Just like this:

After eating, they have to go out again, or Bob is prone to accidents.

Once all of that is complete, it is time to clean up the kitchen, make the bed, tidy up the bedroom and start some maintenance household tasks. I finally figured out, after seven years of marriage, this being the first year I actually stayed in one house all week long, that if I wash one load of laundry a day and fold and put away the dry clothes from the day before, the laundry gods will remain satisfied and I won’t have to sacrifice my sanity or my firstborn (which I haven’t got) to satiate their wrath. (Prior to this year, Jonathon was in public office, and we lived at home four days and in Columbia for three. Establishing a household routine under such conditions is difficult, to say the least. And the laundry gods thundered frequently.)

Anyway, I make it my priority to do this every day. Yesterday, sadly, I was dealing with an unpleasant health flare and it didn’t get done. I can already hear the laundry gods rumbling. But never fear! I’ll put them to rest today.

By the time I’ve finished with household chores, it’s time to start making lunch. A lot of times it’s steak with some fruit and cheese or hamburgers with all the fixings. But sometimes, it’s a new recipe I want to try. For instance, we had braised duck with apples, onions and cranberries one day last week, and boy, was that good!

With something that involved, I usually have to get it started by 10:00 so it’s ready by lunch. While this sounds like a lot of work, it’s okay, because we don’t eat supper. Come 2:00 PM, I am done with food prep and kitchen work for the day, unless I want to get a jumpstart on meals for the next day.

Kaylee, my sister-in-law who lives with us right now, expressed interest in learning to play piano. So she and I have short ten minute lessons as close to every day after lunch as time and schedules allow. They usually end up longer because one or the other of us has to go fetch Captain Chubbs as he crawls off towards something he’s not supposed to be getting into, or remove contraband from his mouth, or rescue him from a climbing predicament. Never a dull moment in this house, I assure you.

Do not let his innocent-looking face fool you. For at this very moment, he was planning his next move.

After that, I get to as much of the other stuff on my To Do list as I can fit in. I usually go upstairs to my sewing room and try to get some new material on 27 written as often as possible. Afterwards, I work on a sewing project, write my little niece a letter, record a chapter of The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse (just started that last week), list more things online to sell, pick an extra cleaning or organizing project (there are about 50 of those to choose from at any given time), throw tennis balls for the dogs outside, etc…

At 7:00, I stop everything to feed the dogs and make sure they get back outside for a potty break.

Then I get in my sauna for about 45 minutes, shower, get ready for bed and get in bed. Once in bed, I read or knit or write and make my To Do list for tomorrow while waiting for Jonathon to get done with all of his stuff and get in bed.

We try, very hard, to get to sleep by 11:00-11:30, but we both struggle with bouts of insomnia, so that doesn’t happen a lot. I’m hoping that as I keep working on improving my health and Jonathon does the same, our sleep quality will also improve.

At any rate, we do fall asleep eventually, then my alarm goes off at 7:30, and I get up and do it all over again. So…now you know. In spite of not having a job, I sure work a lot! I am never bored. I can’t remember the last time I was bored, actually. I learned not to be bored in childhood when my mother made sure to fix my boredom with chores. ; )

And now, a quick update: I will be uploading the Introduction and Chapter 1 of The Pursuit of Elizabeth Millhouse sometime this week for all of you kind paid subscribers. It’s recorded, I merely wait for Jonathon to edit my audio. I’m going to release one new chapter a week until the entire novel is here for you to listen to. If any of you wish to help me in my republishing and publishing endeavors, you can upgrade from a free subscriber to paid. What’s more, I’m going to do the same with 27 when it’s finished, so you’ll be able to listen to both of my novels. To upgrade, click on the audio book when it’s released, and Substack will walk you through the simple process. Or just upgrade below:

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…