Week in the Life: Friday December 15

 

Hey friends, we're doing a one week experiment where we hang out each day and I'll tell you everything that's going on in my life (inspired by Stephany's Week in the Life series).  TGIF!

Friyay!  Both Hubs and I are taking the day off work, so there is no alarm.  On school days Hubs always gets up with Stepson #2 but this once he decides that #2 is 16 and has the ability to get himself out the door without an assist.  Sure enough, #2 does what he needs to do.

On Fridays the rest of my team takes off a little early so unless something unusual is going on they're done by the time I start work.  Normally I get up with the hubs, workout, chillax and start work at 9 like a civilized person.  I'm clever about staying ahead of my workload so it's not accurate to say that I don't work on Fridays but it is accurate to say that I often don't work very hard on Fridays.

Today on our day off I wake up around 6:30 and decide to stay in bed for a bit.  I get up sometime after #2 leaves and head for the coffee maker.  Here's the thing - I know that if I workout first thing that the workout will get done and I can play for the rest of the day.  But I also know that today is a day off and it feels right to sit on the couch and drink coffee first.  Speaking of the coffee, one of my rules is that I only drink one cup a day, but the size of the cup does vary.  My "weekend size" is three scoops of beans instead of 2 and water just above the 4 line on the coffee maker.  The Mug du Jour is Thug Wife.  It was a wedding present to myself.  I gave Hubs a Trophy Husband mug.  He's a plain mug guy and never uses the matching "Hubby" mug or the Trophy Husband mug but he could if he wanted to.  I look at work emails but nothing is on fire and I decide that there's nothing that I need to do for work today (yes I've taken today off as PTO but that doesn't always mean not working).

Wordle is solid today:

I hear footsteps upstairs and I don't need to look at my watch to know that it's 8.  Hubs's internal clock always wakes him up at 8 on non-alarm clock days.  It's pretty impressive.  My natural waking time is sunrise, so I get up earlier in summer and later in winter but Hubs keeps a steady schedule that magically adjusts for daylight savings time.

Both Hubs and #1 come downstairs.  #1 has him final exam of his first semester of college today.  They have breakfast and I'm hungry too.  I pop a Costco breakfast sandwich in the air fryer and settle back on the couch with my computer for...kind of a long time.  Now I have to fight the momentum of sitting on the couch to start my workout.

I finally drag my butt downstairs just before 10.  We all have our "why" for fitness and this morning my why is that my hair is greasy since I haven't washed it in 48 hours and it's driving me nuts.  If I'm gonna take a shower anyway then I might as well sweat.

Hubs works out at night on weekdays but mid morning on non-work days so today we're on the same schedule.  He's running on the treadmill and I'm doing a strength workout so there's no conflict over gym space.  We both put earphones on and he watches Youtube on the gym TV while he runs and I do my workout on my laptop.

After my strength workout I take advantage of the daylight and go outside.  The strength was glute and leg heavy so I know that running won't feel good.  I settle for 20 minutes worth of one minute run-two minutes walk.  There's just a little bit of stubborn snow clinging on but it's a sunny gorgeous day.  The fourth sunny day in a row if anyone's keeping track and that's a rarity for this time of year.

I come back home and shower.  It's almost noon so we have lunch.  I've got just enough salad and dressing for one more round and I pair it with a Costco mini pizza and what's left of my coffee.  I've learned quite a few things about myself in the process of writing these daily recaps and maybe the least-useful-but-not-surprising is that sometimes it takes me from 6AM to 11AM to drink a small cup of coffee on weekdays.  So it's not a shocker that I still have half of a big cup of coffee left over at noon.

After lunch there's still a little room in my belly so I grab a treat.  Our neighbor brought over some Christmas cheer last night of a bottle of wine and some Lofthouse shortbread cookies.  I'm surprised by how good they are.

I finally finish my coffee and now Hubs and I are off on an adventure.  For the last year and a half I've been on a local tourism quest which resulted in me getting a deal on one of the Big City museum memberships.  It's time for us to start reaping the benefits. 

We go to the museum which turns out to be smaller than we expected so we get through it fairly quickly.  There's a planetarium show starting in an hour but nothing left for us to do in the museum.  This is exactly why you need me at times like these because it just so happens that this museum is close to another epic museum and I have another local tourism pass that gets us in free there.  We walk across the street to the other museum, get our geek on, and then come back to museum #1 for the planetarium show.  We get to see stars and learn some fun facts about the upcoming April 2024 eclipse. I saw the 2017 eclipse which was very cool but I now learn that it wasn't a total eclipse where we live but April 2024 will be so it will be even better.  We have until then to find the really cool eclipse viewing glasses that Hubs got back in 2017.

The museum passes were $100 each and today alone we have gotten $50 worth of admissions out of them and the membership year is just starting.  When I travel alone  I do stuff that I want to do, when I go places with Hubs we do stuff that "we" want to do - some of his, some of mine, and when we go places as a family there are more inputs for "we".  If I didn't travel alone we would never have gone to the second museum, and on my own I would never have gone to see the planetarium show - or if I had I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much.  Stay tuned for what we do with our next two Fridays off when the boys are around.

Our day in the Big City winds to a close and we head home.  On tonight's agenda there is something that is almost as rare as a solar eclipse: Hubs is going out on a Man Date with his friends.  He's a dad and they are dads so it almost never works out for them to see each other in person.  Plan A was for him to have dinner with them and I was going to take the boys out to dinner but that's not looking like such a hot idea now.  Hubs's friends can't get away until later than he wants to eat and the boys have a Boy Scout event tonight that starts kind of early as all Boy Scout events do.  We pivot and decide to move our night on the town to tomorrow when there's no time pressure and to make tacos tonight because they're fast and fun.  We stop at the grocery store on the way home for taco fixings.  I should mention that we almost always have pizza on Fridays and I can't explain why we didn't just go with that, but hey sometimes ya gotta change it up.

Tacos get fixed:

When I was a young 'un we always had hard corn shells for tacos and then I found the mecca of Taco Bell and learned about soft shell tortillas which are my preferred shell.  However in the past few years I've gotten corn shells for family taco dinners for a family member with Celiac disease and it turns out that both Stepson #2 and I like them.  Also since my childhood taco shell technology has advanced and hard shells now have flat bottoms so that they stand upright.

After dinner I go for walkies, getting back just as the boys head out to Boy Scouts.  Hubs leaves to meet his friends and I settle on the couch with TV and the bloggo.  Normally I like a few drinky drinks on Friday but since I drank last night I'm not feeling it tonight.  I have two of the Lofthouse shortbread cookies and find out that they're not nearly as good without coffee on the side.  Hmmm...I want something but what?  I don't want more food, I don't want another treat, I don't want booze....

I find myself wanting something that I have not wanted for years.  Sometimes I drink black tea at night - yes I know that it has caffeine but my story is that "tea" caffeine doesn't hit like "coffee" caffeine.  However I find myself wanting herbal tea which I can't even remember the last time that I had.  The reason that it's on my radar is that Stepson #2 has started drinking tea.  His mom gave him a sampler packet of Bigelow teas, and there are a few that he doesn't like.  Of his rejects the orange spice feels like it has my name on it.  Done!  The mug was a present from our neighbors (guess where they're from???)

I made cookie dough last night and I time it so that the cookies will come out of the oven at about the time that I think the boys will get home.  I nail the timing.  The boys have cookies and disappear to their computers.

I have a confession: my family looooves chocolate chip cookies and I'm not saying that I don't like chocolate chip cookies but also...they're ordinary.  If they were white chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, or something with coconut and nuts I'd be all over them, but a plain chocolate chip cookie doesn't speak to my soul.  I'm not saying that I never eat them, but usually I don't bother.

I finish blogging and watching random Youtube videos and it's 8:30.  I can fit a movie in.  I've been listening to a podcast about a man who was working at a bank in the late 60's and was obsessed with the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, which is about a bank heist.  The man walked out of the bank with $200,000 in a paper bag and was never heard from again until late in his life when he told his wife and daughter "oh yeah I changed my name before I met your mom and there are people still looking for me but don't google that".

 

So Thomas Crown turns out to be...OK.  It's a good looking movie but I'm less interested in fictional stories about millionaires who hire other people to rob banks for them than I am in the real life kid who was fascinated by this movie and decided to do it for himself.  After about an hour I start getting bored so I pause it.  TBD if I'll watch the rest.

I head upstairs, shower, do the NYT crossword, and reach for my book.  Oh shoot I'm doing that thing where I do pushups on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and today is one of those days and it's 10:30...hey late is better than never.  I alternate sets up pushups with chapters in my book.  I haven't had a lot of reading time this week so I'm surprised to see that I'm almost at the end of A is for Alibi.  I *could* finish it tonight but I'm sleepy.  Hubs comes home around 11.  He's had a good time on the town with his gang.  We turn out the lights.  The next thing I know it's 3:30 and...it's 3:30 and I'm not going back to sleep.  I pop in the airpods and hit up a sleep meditation.  I'm still awake afterwards but then the next thing I know it's Saturday.  But that's a story for tomorrow.