Week in the Life: Tuesday December 12

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).  Happy Tuesday!

On Tuesdays we sleep in until the luxurious hour of 6:30.  Hubs and I go downstairs - he has breakfast and makes sure that Stepson #2 gets up and gets himself out the door, and I go straight to the basement and hit the treadmill.  I feel good but not super fly so I just do a 20 minute power walk and watch Youtube videos.  My arm is completely back to normal after Sunday's COVID shot.  Stepson #2 is gone before I get back upstairs, so once again we miss each other in the morning.  Stepson #1 has finals this week, but none today so he gets to sleep in.

After my workout I start the coffee maker and head for the shower.  Then I come back downstairs and snuggle up with that sweet, sweet cup of coffee and Wordle.  It's a much better day today.  I start the Spelling Bee but it's not holding my interest so I abandon it and never look back.

I get hungry much sooner than yesterday and pop a Costco breakfast sandwich in the air fryer.  Same as yesterday, I eat a handful of grapes while I'm waiting for it to finish.  My Coffee Mug du Jour is the Shakespearean Insult Mug.

Oh hey it's 7:55 so it's time to go to work.  I stop for a Reheating of the Coffee on the way.  Let me show you my fabulous office setup.

When I say fabulous I mean comfortable and functional.  The chair and the monitors are from my previous employer and were gifts back when they switched to permanently remote in 2021.  My desk was less than $200 and it's adjustable so that I can stand on those rare occasions when I want to.  My work laptop is perched up on a box for the dual purpose of being eye level/hopefully a more flattering angle for Zoom.  My personal laptop is tucked away on the left.  I don't feel that I need to explain why I have a Rubix cube on my desk because doesn't everybody?  At one time I could solve it from memory but it's not an active skill right now.  My mouse is on the left because guess what I'm left handed.  I *can* use my right hand but I've stressed my wrist from doing too many right handed things so it's not comfortable.  I've got a photo frame chock full of our fabulous adventures which I adore seeing throughout the day.  The room has two windows so I've got good light on sunny days and off to the side I have my comfy chair that I recently acquired.  Overall it's a very pleasant place to spend the day.

Then I log in to work and my work space becomes instantly unpleasant because yeccccchhhh.  One million emails and one million things that I need to do RIGHT NOW.  My head gets scrambled and it takes a while to get out of the fog and get my bearings.  Oops coffee is cold, let's go downstairs for a Reheating of the Coffee.  Focus...focus...boss has questions so forget focusing.  This is pretty normal for my work mornings.  Recently I came across a productivity book that said that the key to success is to spend the first two hours of your work day getting prepared.  Isn't that a great tip?  Yes if only I would start work at midnight I could get fully organized before the rest of my team starts work on the other side of the globe.

Eventually I work my way through the fog and get into a grove of productively doing the work thing while chatting with my team on Slack.  I finish the US payroll before the deadline and switch over to ROW (rest of world).  So much stuff to go through...so many Excel files to make into one file.  It's actually something that I like doing so don't cry for me.  I want to take a break to kick back and read blogs but it's not in the cards right now.  There are more Reheatings of the Coffee which I finally finish around 11.

11:30 feels like the right time to get dressed and I'm feeling fancy so I invest in a 10 minute session with the curling iron.

Oh hey lunchtime!  I kind of want to have the Gochujang noodles again BUT Weekend Me bought salad mix and I have some of my favorite salad dressing on hand and those things have a time limit so it's a pasta and salad day.  If you're thinking "oh it must be nice to work from home so that you can cook lunch every day" I have news for you.  Yes it IS nice to work from home, but Murphy's law says that anytime that I decide to cook for lunch that will be the moment that my boss wants to have a call on Slack.  I've learned the hard way never to do anything more technical than use the microwave for lunch.  But I am very grateful to just be able to pull stuff out of the freezer instead of having to pull stuff out of the freezer and put it in a lunch bag so that I can take it to an office and put it in the office fridge and nuke it up in the office microwave.

I just happen to have penne with marinara in freezer, and we always have a giant bag of Costco frozen meatballs on hand so I combine the two and add a little more marinara and top with parm.  Salad mix comes out of the bag and gets tossed with dressing for a Two Plate Special.

Afterwards I go out for my lunch walk/podcast listen.  It's a little cool but not too cold and there's a big yellow ball in the sky.  Much improved over yesterday.

After lunch it seems like I've made enough of a dent in the day's work to take a break, so I kick back in my office comfy chair and read the bloggy blogs.  I put in another work sesh.  The most exciting thing is that the US payroll reports come back from our payroll provider so I get to check them out and make sure everyone's getting paid what they're supposed to be paid.  OK fine it's just another exercise in Excel but it's a "feel good" exercise in Excel.  Sure enough the numbers are what they are supposed to be so I approve the payroll.  And that's the end of the fun stuff because the rest is boring.  We're still on our quest to hunt down every non-payroll goodie given to every employee and make sure that we've taxed everything that needs to be taxed.  This is going to continue up to the minute that we send out the rest of world payroll so all I can do is go through the motions and wait it out.  This is one of those rare days in this job where my work goes past 5, but I'm logged out by 5:30 so nothing too terrible.

Meanwhile downstairs Hubs and Stepson #2 have started dinner.  It's a mac n'cheese n'nuggets night (the dark blob is BBQ sauce).  I would rather have anything else for dinner but I'm part of a family so I've settled for mostly eating what everyone else eats.  It's worth it for the company.

After dinner I take a walk and the boys get ready for Scouts.  They're gone before I get back.  I watch a little TV (TMZ and random Youtube) and write the bloggo.  I haven't had any snacks today so a treat is called for.  I snag a Magnum double gold bar out of the freezer.

The fellas come home and sack out for a bit.  Hubs and I do the puzzle of the day.  We're at the halfway point of the puzzle so if anyone is keeping track we're halfway through advent in the blink of an eye.

Hubs and I make our way upstairs and showering/reading/crossword puzzling ensue.  I'm very tired but again my body can't figure out how to make the sleep thing happen so I bring in an assist from a sleep meditation.  I wake up several times in the night but sleep is decent enough.  And the next thing I know it's Wednesday.  But that's a story for tomorrow.